Credibility
by Diamroyal
Summary: School is there for both the teachers and the students, and no one stops learning. Post EW, Wu Fei POV. In Disdain of Mortals arc 4 of 6
1. Chapter 1

Credibility—Ch. I

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Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.  
_Mark Twain, (1835-1910)_

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.  
_Wolfgang Pauli, (1900-1958) on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague_

The lecture hall was as shabby as the rest of the building. The cheap fabric of the seats was frayed and ripped, showing foam underneath the puce-green exterior. The carpet wasn't much better, and the wood of the podium looked ready to disintegrate from age. When I looked at the computer system though, I let a small relieved sigh escape. They hadn't cut the corners there, and the equipment was of good quality…and I could actually use it. I don't know why I let Une—and Sally, don't forget her—talk me into this. Maybe it _is_ getting me out of the office, and maybe I'm getting paid; but I still have real work to do. This hardly constituted as something that would further my ends.

I booted the computer, waiting the requisite minute-and-a-half that it seemed to take all computers to come on-line, and when the screens were up, plugged the various disks I'd brought with me for graphics into the different slots and ran through them, double checking to make sure none of them had corrupted in the time since I had last touched them. They tended to be locked up in a very secure place for the majority of the time, never being seen, touched or used.

While I did the nearly mindless task, I had to wonder about why I was here, when Duo could have done it just as well as I—if not better, what with his fascination with machines and engineering.

While I was involved in my own little world of computers and lecture notes, students, noticed, catalogued and nearly dismissed, began to filter in, a sure indication, (backed up by the clock, though the thing was six minutes off, when checked against the computer time, and then my cell phone,) that the beginning of class was closer.

They scattered like rice across the many seats, some of them talking, some of them pulling out massive notebooks, but I ignored them all, keeping them on the peripherals of my senses, as close to "zoning them out", as Duo would put it, as was possible for any of us.

I wondered if they were speaking about me, whether they even thought I was the lecturer, or if they thought, from my age, I was an assistant instead. And that made me wonder if, had they realized me as the lecturer, they would have stopped talking, stopped enjoying their lives. When I thought of it like that…no. I wouldn't venture down that twisted path again, and chose then, just as the time moved over the hour mark, to look up and focus on the class before me. I wondered how long it would take them all to realize who I was.

That was certainly a major downside to my job. Perhaps I still took pride in the fact that I had never hidden me or Nataku away, but no one had known me, and I was used to slipping in and slipping back out, just as the others were. The spotlight meant, then, that we had failed, that we had been captured, that someone was going to use ourselves against us. It made me uncomfortable, this fame that came, where I couldn't even hope to stand in front of a group of my supposed peers, (for all that most of them were older than I,) and have them not recognize me, or my name.

My watch blinked at me, the digital reading changing every second. One minute. I looked up at the room where it tiered above me and began to rapidly count the students already there—a skill I'd picked up in the war. I'd been finding more and more lately that many of the skills that were so important to my survival in the war carried over into peace. It just required a different application.

There was a decided lack of surprise in me when I swept across the top row only to see Duo sprawled in one of the seats. I let a small smirk creep over my face as he raised his hand in salute. Well, if he was going to be there…I would use him. Especially if I had to go through this. He must have gotten wind of the new bike.

The clock hit nine, and I minimized the program screens, hitting the power button on the projector to "prime" it as well.

Then I pulled out the electronic signature pad and squared myself off against the room.

"My name is Wu Fei Chang. This is the course on internal electronic systems used in mobile suits, and, more importantly, the application of those systems in other areas." I pulled out my reading glasses as I opened my gifted textbook, the one I'd received after Relena had heard about it, so all of us could make sure nothing too revealing was in it, and put in my last words of the introduction. "This lecture is by invitation only, and you will need to verify your agreement of the non-disclosure statement on this." I held up the pad and took the few steps necessary to give it to the closest person.

They were still scattered, though, and I decided that I didn't like it. "Also, next time, everyone in the first three rows. There are enough seats there, and I have no interest in raising my voice at all." I could hear a flash of laughter from Duo in his last row seat.

The pad slowly passed from person to person as I went on, each student pressing his thumb to the screen as it went.

"For the most part, the systems we will be going over will be from the Gundam suits, as they were—and, since there are no longer any suits anywhere, still are—the most technologically advanced. We will also be going over a few others, most notably the Tallgeese I and II, the Mercurius and its brother, the Vayeate, and the mobile doll, Virgo. If you would open—oh, I forgot the Serpent. We'll also be looking at those. Now, if you would open your texts to the contents, you'll see that the book has been laid out in much that way." I paused. "Read the book, but remember that this author is a civilian, and so did not have access to some of the necessary information. There are discrepancies. For the list, check the database. The majority of them are there."

The pad had made its way back to Duo, who was in a small argument with the student trying to hand it to him. Finally, he gave a huff and pressed his thumb to it, showing a look of triumph to the startled student as the pad began to screech loudly.

I started up the steps towards them. "As you can see, had any of you not been on the list, you would have set off the alarms." I came even with the smirking Duo. "Maxwell here, is not on the list." Duo just grinned at me, and punched in his security clearance code and the hellacious sounds stopped. "However, since he will be assisting me somewhat, he is authorized." Oh, but that brought an evil glare from him. I put my hand out for the silenced pad, glancing at the tally of names. Three present hadn't signed.

"I'm missing some people here. If you haven't signed, you need to do so, otherwise you need to leave." Two students grabbed their bags, heading for the doors, and a guy got up to come over and sign.

"Good. Now we get onto the actual work." I took the steps two at a time down, and slid the pad back into my briefcase.

Clicking on the first minimized program brought it up to the overhead screen, and pulled up Wing's computer boards, and showing some of the coding that had made it run. "This is Wing, Gundam 01. As you can see, the coding system for the on-board computers is somewhat different than the one detailed in your texts." I looked at them myself, blown up over my head, seeing the differences from Nataku. "Because of the systems needs to stay up to the stress margin, the actual boards had to be laid out in a different manner than what we normally think of as being possible."

Looking at them again, instead of the electrical schematics showing the weak and strong points of the system, I saw them all watching me carefully, and taking equally careful notes. Meeting Duo's eyes, I couldn't help but see that we were having matching thoughts. Hopefully, I wasn't giving information to people who would become as our trainers were, down into the future.

Approximately thirty-five minutes were spent on Wing's computers, going over mostly generalities with a few pertinent details, until there was only five minutes left of the class. Then I wrapped it up, skipping over various points of Deathscythe, intimating that it would be wise to see what was in the book as far as that suit was concerned—which I found amusing, since no one really understood that machine, except Duo, and he'd refused to tell anyone why it worked the way it did, he and his trainer having done an amazing amount of modifications to the general suit designs to get it to where it was. So there wasn't much that could be explained about the system, since none of the diagrams were complete. I could see Duo smirking in my mind as I thought about having to go over the sketchy details so briefly.

When the hour ended the students piled out and Duo hopped the seats, not bothering with the crowded stairs, to get down to where I was. I timed the student's exodus; only two minutes, three seconds for everyone to disperse out the doors, but as the doors closed behind them I glanced up, and saw one girl still sitting at the edge of the sixth row.

Duo, per his style, began talking as soon as he got to me. "So, the new one's in, huh?" The girl was still there. I nodded. "We'll have to do something interesting with it."

He rattled on, but I chose to ignore him as I packed my stuff up, pulling out the disks and shutting the computer system down. When I was done, we started up the stairs, and I paused by the girl, cutting Duo off-mid word. She was, to all appearances, studying.

"Are you going to stay in here?" Dark eyes flashed upwards from notebooks filled in with neat capital lettering.

"Yes." My eyebrows rose just a little as I got a good look at the notes—history. Her voice was sure as she continued with a shrug. "No one else is going to be in here for nearly three hours, so it's quiet."

Ah. I gave a short nod, and began climbing the stairs to Duo, where he was waiting by the door. Her voice stopped me short, and I started to get annoyed. "Actually, professor, I have a question."

As I turned around, I muttered some nasty things about Une under my breath. "Don't call me that. I'm not a professor."

Duo, being himself, and completely against standing for any period of time when he didn't have to, plopped bonelessly onto the top step, merrily humming one of his old songs under his breath.

She stood up carefully, watching her stack of books and papers as they threatened to spill. Looking me full in the face when she'd succeeded without any disasters, she swept the light hair out of her face. Her raised eyebrows were clearly visible, even in the dim light. "Well, what would you like me to call you? Mr. Chang, Captain Chang?"

There was a snicker from over my shoulder, and I shot Duo a glare, swinging back to her as I ignored his bright grin. "I don't care, just don't call me professor." I couldn't keep my slight sulk out of my voice, and it mingled in there with the annoyance at my commanding officer.

All she gave up to me was a shrug. "Anyway, I was just wondering about the stealth system that the oh-two Gundam was rumored to have. Are we going to be going over that?"

That stopped me. No, we wouldn't be, because…well, if I looked over my shoulder, I could see the reason why. I didn't, though I could almost feel the grin leaving his face.

"No, those schematics have never been released. They will stay that way; the only parts open ever to this course will be the ones already mentioned, and the ones that I'll be going over next lecture."

She nodded at my scrambled-together excuse. But it was the truth. Duo hadn't told anybody, so he was the only one alive who knew the secret. He said it was best if those systems stayed a secret as long as possible. All of us agreed with him, but Lady and Relena had thought otherwise. Duo is much more stubborn than they are, though, and his wishes had prevailed.

As she nodded, she gave a sigh, followed by a bright smile. "Somehow, I knew that would be the answer. Thank you for taking the time to actually confirm it." She turned away from me, and did a repeat performance with the books, this time carefully sitting back down. I nodded to her as I re-hefted my own pile of stuff and finished the climb to the now somber Duo. I knew he must be thinking about his Gundam, and the secrets it had held, but he smiled and leaped to his feet when I drew even to him, snagging one of the cases I carried.

"So, what's this new bike?"

I pulled my own mind from those machines of war and gave it over to the machines that made up my hobby.

"Quatre paid for it, so it's beyond what we would have seen. Apparently, he's going to buy five of them for us, and this one is for Trowa…" That got an appreciative whistle. "I have some tentative ideas, but, of course, I'm sure you'll expand them."

"Oh, yeah? Does the fact that the first one is Trowa's have anything to do with the certain anniversaries that are coming up this summer? Like, one year up on L4 for him, or…" The area wasn't secure to go into the other anniversary that was in the fall, so he had to let it trail off, both of us all too well aware of the insecurity of our surroundings. Then he grinned at me, as I could see from the corner of my eye, and went to a safer topic. "Or do you just think it's because of Trowa?"

"Probably a bit of all three of those, knowing how Quatre works." Duo snorted, and we continued onto the parking lots.

We walked the hallways, part of the world, but not like the people around us. We were nineteen, and knew more and had done more than people twice, even three times our age. How could we ever fit in with these innocents around us? But as we reached bright sunshine, I shook the constant questions off, and relaxed in the company of my friend as we discussed the motorcycle modifications and what our other friends were doing.

* * *

Two days later Duo came right down to the front of the hall with me, and helped set up the equipment. Then he pulled out the small projector-pen he'd set up for the bike, and we passed the time until the students settled—in the first three rows—going over some of the final points, determining that we could order parts that night and start stripping the bike in my garage in preparation.

That day we did the a little more on Deathscythe, as much as was able, and did an overview on Heavyarms and Sandrock, finishing just as the five minutes came up before the end. Duo would interject a few choice comments, usually interrupting me to do it. I think he did it just to annoy me. At the five minute mark, I gave the passcode to access the diagrams I was using, which were different than the ones in the book, so they could access them on the database.

Again, as everyone else filed out, the blonde girl stayed behind, spreading out across several seats in her studying. Duo and I ignored her as we used the connection on the desk's computer to begin the parts ordering, knowing that it would take less time than one of us setting up either of our laptops there, or running to my house. We were in the middle of a discussion—or argument, if you'd rather—over brands for some of the more integral parts we were changing when the girl's voice issued from behind the monitor we were bent over.

"I would recommend the PF30's." When we looked around the monitor, she was back to her books, the picture of a concentrating student. But she wasn't going to get away with that, not if she'd been listening, eavesdropping on our discussion.

"And you would because?" I moved around the small desk/podium to look up at her where she sat at the edge of the second row. Her book dropped to the little pull-out desk as she let out a sigh, as if she regretted saying anything. She crossed her arms across her chest before she started.

"Hysen's a good company, they have a good warranty and they offer quality products, but the PF30's have a better time-integrity than they do, as well as being easier to integrate with other parts from different manufacturers. The interface is also a lot better with the basics than with the Hysen, if you're going to be doing anything involving computers, which is what it sounds like." Finished, she began to go back to her books, but I interrupted her as Duo, still behind the monitor, let out an "I told you so."

"So you've done some work with both of these brands before?" It stopped her actions towards her books, bringing her eyes up to mine. All that I could tell in the relative dimness is that they were dark under her light lashes and the fair skin of her eyelids.

"No, I haven't." I was about to ask her what she'd know about it then, but she went on, making me swallow the words. "My brother does. He's rather obsessed with cars and 'cycles, he does all sorts of things with them, and I hear about it, exhaustively, from him and his friends, who all have opinions about everything; but the general consensus is that the PF30 is better in the performance area. So yes, I've had experience with it, though I have managed to avoid any actual work with either company's products." Another pause. "Now, I apologize for entering my unasked for opinion. I won't do it again."

This time she did go back to her books, and I decided abruptly that I would look up her file later, after I was out of there. Right then, I just went back to the computer, and let Duo order his choices for parts. I hadn't really needed her interjection, because Duo always ended up with his own way, but still…I wouldn't have expected her to have an opinion of any kind. Hell, I didn't even know who the hell she was, other than someone who was almost certainly an engineering major of some kind, to be sitting through the lectures. The majority of the students were computer, electrical, manufacturing and mechanical engineers, though there were a few more mundane technicians who were there to give them ideas for developing new systems on the colonies—where most of the technologies used in the Gundams were going to end up.

It didn't take us very long to finish with the ordering, and we were reassured by the fact that the parts would be in soon, the first arriving at the end of the week. So when we were done, we left the hall, where she stayed behind, intent on her pile of papers and books. Duo left me at the entrance, walking off as if he owned the world, and everything in it, and I threw my cases into the passenger seat of the sensible little car I kept for running around in. As was to be expected, they made me park in the commuter student parking lots, since I wasn't going to be there forever. The college wasn't even paying me, so why give me a precious parking spot closer? The whole thing was a pain, and I again wished that Lady had found someone else to do this favor. I had things that needed to be done on my desk at headquarters, I didn't need to be spending two days a week giving some lecture about systems that we all thought would be better kept under wraps. I pulled out, only half seeing the things around me as I did everything automatically, my mind focused on the annoyance that was circling around through my head when ever I really thought about this silly "assignment".

Two years. I had been working for Preventers for two years already. I had bought a house a year ago, when my cycle collection had grown to six complete bikes, and the house I had bought had a large garage, as well as another shop in the back of the yard. It was odd, to live in a house that wasn't in the colonies. The ridiculous salary I was paid would have let me afford a much larger one, in a nicer area, but I liked the seclusion of the edge of town, and I liked the fact that it was the right size for me, just two bedrooms, one of which worked as a general office/library. Yes, it was small, I suppose some could even call it quaint, but it was mine, something that I earned with money that wasn't from what my clan had left, and wasn't from the blood money they'd tried to offer at the end of the war. I felt a derisive snort rise in my throat. As if any of us would have taken that money. None of us would accept money for "our services" during that war. We paid and were paid in blood, and money has no value against that.

I pulled into the driveway, leaving the car there, but taking the briefcases in, because of the sensitive papers and diagrams. Those would stay with me or in my bedroom until they went back into the vaults at headquarters. It really was such a pain to do this favor. As I went through the house, checking every door and window for signs of a forced entry, a habit I didn't think I'd ever lose, I set the cases beside the bed on my way through the bedroom, heading ultimately for the office, where I could remote access the computer on my desk at headquarters, and actually get some real work done in the latter half of the day. So I hit the power on the computer before running to the 'fridge for a glass of cranberry juice. When I got back to the office, and sat down at the desk, the first thing I did was pull up the student files for that class.

She was the fourth file I came across. Her dark blue eyes stared back at me from the screen, her hair all around her face. For a second, she reminded me of Quatre, she had the same fierce look in her eyes. Her name was Samantha Lee Dowldon. I might have read further, and gone on to all the details of her life, but something stopped me. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes, daring me to, daring me to dissect her life, the life stored on paper. It stopped me, whatever it was. I didn't read it then, and I remember thinking about it much later, when I did read it. Instead, I shut down the files, and opened the Preventers e-mail, to see what new things plagued my empty desk, a desk I would see tomorrow, but surely tomorrow wasn't soon enough. I was having enough trouble keeping up without giving in to the desire to be out in the garage, stripping that newest bike.

Work the next day was surreal as I slogged through the paperwork that I had somehow agreed to do two years ago. I really should've taken a completely field agent position. I hate all this. But no, Lady thought it would be better for me to juggle both the desk job and the field work, to keep me in shape. So here I was, writing press releases and setting up an infiltration, all on the same day. Hell, I hardly ever left the van in the field. It was an endlessly sore point with me, the things I had to do, the publicity, the interfacing with the population, all of this ridiculous dance. I sighed as I sent the release to Lady's desk, for officiating, and sent for the agent I had chosen for the infiltration.

I was just connecting to Duo when my secretary called to say the agent I'd sent for was there. I thanked her, then mentally turned to Duo.

"I've got a job for you."

"What, officially?" I could almost hear the smile in his voice. "What is it this time?"

I shrugged, even though I knew he couldn't see it. "You're just opening the door. A drug ring, you and another agent."

There was a pause. "A partner? How big a deal is this thing?"

I rolled my eyes as I thought of the stubborn American. "It's not that big, but we've already got it primed for a joint op, two agents." I knew what he thought of partners, he'd done enough freelance for us already. "Really, you could do it alone, but we'd have to wait a while for this to go down, then set it back up for a solo, and that's just not feasible. So you get a tag-along."

I could imagine the grimace on Duo's face. He hated having partners, but still…the money was always good, and even though he didn't really need it, he still carried some scars from his childhood. And he was good at it, the whole thing.

"I have to have a partner." It wasn't really a question, so I didn't answer. There was a sigh on the other side of the phone line, and his voice came back over. "All right, I'll do it. When do you want me there?"

"How far away are you now?" He always asked, and I always asked in return.

"Uh, I can be there in maybe, uh, twenty minutes?" You could hear him moving in the background. "Who'll I be working with?"

"That's why it'd be good to get down here. You don't know him, but he's waiting outside my office." The phone was muffled a second while he apparently pulled a shirt on. "Make it eighteen, and we'll be even."

"Okay, eighteen minutes it is then." He dropped the connection, and I called Marcia, telling her to let the waiting agent in.

He entered, slipping past the secretary I had hand-picked for her glare alone, and sat down, straight backed in one of the chairs pulled to the front of my desk. I gave another sigh—internal this time—as I looked at him. Agent Davies had always resented the fact that I was younger than him and so far over his head. So he treated me with the absolute respect he felt I didn't really deserve. I'd asked Duo about it once, and that's what he told me, without ever having set eyes on the man before me. Well, he'd dislike this even more than he did me, once he got a look at Duo.

"Davies, I have an assignment for you." I almost winced to myself at that. Of course I had an assignment for him. Why else would I call him in? "There's a drug ring that has been expanding beyond the capabilities of the local police. We need it infiltrated before we can make any move: there simply isn't enough information on it to justify the launch of a complete operation."

He gave a short nod, no verbal acknowledgment. The guy could push it a little far sometimes.

I pulled out the two slim folders, identical to each other, representing the entirety of the intelligence we'd been given by the department local to the operation.

"This is what we've got to work with. Your partner for this mission will be here shortly." I'd found a long time ago that the more short you were with Davies, the better it would go. "If you'll begin getting yourself acquainted with that folder, he'll be here in about," I glanced at the clock, "ten minutes."

Another short nod, but this time he actually said something, though it was only: "Yes sir." He opened the folder and began to carefully read through it. He was really going to hate Duo.

I went back to the other paperwork on my desk as we waited for Duo to get in. I had actually made a dent in one of the piles when I heard Marcia through the door, giggling—I swear, she giggled—and knew that Duo had arrived. Another glance at the clock showed that he was two minutes early. A smirk passed across my face. He must be really bored. I think that's why he did all the contract work, like he was staving off boredom. Marcia's still-giggly voice came over the intercom.

"Sir, Mr. Maxwell is here. He says you called him?"

I reached forward to hit the send button. "Yes, Marcia, I did. I forgot to tell you I was expecting him."

"Oh, that's okay, Mr. Chang." Her happy parting comment echoed out from the outer office as Duo swung the door open.

"Hey, Chang. Sixteen minutes." Davies was watching him as he jauntily took the few steps to the other chair, and dropped down into it. "That's dinner."

I just ignored him while motioning to Davies. "Agent Davies, this is Special Agent Black." That got a look from Davies as he stood to shake Duo's hand. It took a lot to get that Special, and even more to get the code name rather than just using his last name. But, of course, Duo was my age, and so was much too young. Davies was only five years older than us, but he was constantly trying, (at least in my case,) to act like the gap was wider.

Duo, much to my relief, actually stood up to shake Davies hand. Maybe he recognized the agent from the time I'd asked, because he sent a sly eyebrow at me before he sat back down. When he did, I gave the other folder to him. "Davies has been going over the file, so you'd better catch up—but later. I'll give you a quick overview now, then you can go requisition whatever you're going to need." Duo still flipped open the folder, and ran a quick eye over it. I raised eyebrows at him when he gave a quick bark of laughter, getting a strange look from Davies.

"What is it, Maxwell?"

"We're going to be in White's town."

I could feel my eyebrows get higher. "Really? I didn't know you'd located him." A nod, brief, as we were both aware of our passive audience.

"Well, you'll hardly need to contact him." I closed the subject. "Here's the basics on the file;" and I launched into the briefing, familiar enough footing after two years.

They left together, and I could only hope that Duo would know how to handle Davies, and keep him out from underfoot while he worked. But then again, that's why we could trust him. He knew how to handle people, and he knew how to do his job.

I put it all out of my mind as the day came to a close, giving way to evening as I pulled out of the lot on a bike, heading towards home, and hopefully, my latest shipment of books. I was slowly working my way through the "classics" as they were called, from each culture group, and got in a crate every month. It gave me something to do in the evenings, something relaxing, with no relations to work or anything that might come forward from the past to haunt me.

* * *

It was my third lecture, and Duo was already gone, so I was alone in front of the class. But I rambled on with only half my mind, the other half on both work, and, to my surprise, Miss Dowldon, sitting in the same place as last time, her head bent over her papers. Every once in a while, she would give a little snicker, as if whatever I were saying she found amusing.

When the lecture was over, I was extremely glad that there were only the three in the next week. Then the actual professor who was supposed to be teaching it would be back, and I could go back to work. Really, this whole thing is just a waste of time. But then the hall was empty, leaving only the girl and I, as she started studying, and I packed up. It was as I was walking past her that her slight laughter came back to me, so I stopped next to her seat.

"Why were you laughing?"

She looked up, startled, her eyes wide, she'd been concentrating hard enough to forget me. A gentle blush lit across her features as she looked up at me where I stood. "Um."

I just looked back at her, knowing that eventually, my stare would prevail.

It did, and she looked away as she answered. "It's just... Well, you." She paused and bit back a smile. "You sounded like you were quoting something—or someone—every once in a while, and it sounded like the person had a very dry humor, that's all." It came out in somewhat of a rush.

I frowned, and thought back over what she might be referring to. Today I'd gone over Nataku and Tallgeese, and I tried to recall exactly what I'd said. I did figure it out, and realized that she was right, I had been quoting—Master O. And he did indeed have a "dry humor". It made me smile, just a little, as I thought of the lectures he'd given me about Nataku. When I came out of the memories, I saw her looking at me strangely, with a look on her face that I couldn't place. It was questioning, and maybe a little piercing, with a little of something, the thing I couldn't place, making her eyes very dark in the already shadowed hall.

"Yes, sometimes I was quoting, and yes, they did have a rather harsh sense of humor." Though how I'd transferred those phrases and sentences from Mandarin subconsciously, I would never know.


	2. Chapter 2

Many thanks to Crazy and Miyabi, for betas, and everything else they do!

Credibility Ch. II

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Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! It is a dangerous servant, and a terrible master.  
_George Washington (1732 – 1799)_

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.  
_George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)_

Thankfully, the professor was back from whatever it was she'd had to do. I hadn't asked details before, and I wasn't going to now; it wasn't necessary. Just so long as the ordeal was over, that I'd done what was requested of me with the appropriate amount of attention…and the length of time before Une asked me for another favor was a long one. Until that time, I wasn't going to dwell on what it might be, since I knew it wasn't going to be the most inspiring thing on earth.

So, instead of those thoughts, I occupied myself with getting ready to field the press that was going to be on our doorsteps as soon as they gathered their collectively small wits, and realized the bust that had been engineered was _not_ from the local police department.

On that note, I turned my attention to the door, waiting for my returning agents to walk through. It was a while before I got the call from the watch desk, letting me know that they'd passed through the entry check points, and I knew to expect them in less than a minute, if the officer at the front desk had been accurate with his call.

Duo was the first one to walk in the open door, Marcia being absent due to the hour. He had a wave and a grin for me before he sat down, and he was closely followed by a tired-looking Davies. The former Gundam pilot was the first to speak.

"Well, that was fun." His sarcastic tone wasn't needed, I could tell he was meaning anything but from his expression alone, as it was pinched up into a look of distaste. "You know, man, I'll help you take down a drug ring _anytime_, but that doesn't have to mean I like actually having to associate with them." Now he looked slightly nauseous. "Hell, I don't even like having to watch them."

I was glancing between him and the preliminary arrest records as he spoke, and by the time he'd finished speaking, I was concentrating more on the reports. "But perhaps it's that aversion that lets you be so successful. At least, according to these." I indicated the papers by lifting a few pages.

After I'd gone through most of it, I closed it, and focused on the agents. "What's not in here that I need to know?"

Davies rubbed his eyes with one hand as he barely relaxed in his chair. It was for returning field agents that I had the overstuffed chairs in my office to begin with. And why they were covered in a liquid-proof material that was ridiculously easy to clean. "They were using kids to move it. That's why it was so hard to get a fix on them in the first place. But they were also using kids to move the account information, making it even harder."

I felt some surprise filter through me, and I looked at Duo. "How?"

He shrugged back at me, and made a helpless gesture. "Video games." After he'd said it, he had the grace to look a little sheepish, as we'd often used the same trend of methods to move quite a few things during the war. It seemed that there would always be things to haunt us. At least we knew that we weren't the ones that had given this idea to a side we would never condone.

"Ah, I see." I nodded to Davies to continue.

"We moved into position with no trouble, and began to integrate ourselves into the organization, but we hit a snag when someone recognized Maxwell as someone they'd known on L2."

I glanced at Duo with a small amount of alarm, but knew it probably looked just a little bit like surprise. He shook his head at me, telling me without words that it wasn't a war connection, or anything else that would break the greater cover we were all maintaining.

Duo shrugged, perhaps doing it only to make a more definitive, and "right" action out of his response to my silent question. Always hiding. "It wasn't anything important, really, nothing that could make a difference." He grinned. "Hell, the guy didn't even know my name, just recognized this," and he held up the end of his braid, "from _grade school_, if you can believe it."

With his stressing of those two words, I wondered what significance they held for him. "Okay, go on."

Another shuffle, an imitation of a shrug this time. "Well, despite that minor inconvenience, everything was perfectly fine. We got in, we got busy, we got arrests. Everything should be happy hunky dory."

I looked at him. "Why does the arrest report indicate that Meyers," the leader of the ring, "was babbling about night creatures stalking him?"

They both looked baffled, though I noticed that slippery Maxwell wasn't _saying_ anything. He did, however, begin to tap a complex pattern on the arm of his chair, the taut fabric enough for it to make a fair thrumming sound. I listened to it with half an ear, waiting for the message, and went on to tell them to get out of HQ, get some sleep, and type up some full reports, because we were going to need them.

Davies left quite a bit earlier than Duo did, looking as worn out as I had ever seen him coming off the field. Hopefully, that meant that Duo had run him into the ground, and I wouldn't have to listen to any of the gossip I knew, otherwise, would be running around the halls. I could just feel it now, the whole publicity of this thing. Whenever we took over anything from a local police department, it seemed to garner the most attention, and that attention was usually _rife_ with accusations of jurisdictional issues, whispers full of the words "just like the Alliance," and similar idiocy.

Luckily, I was only one of many to give interviews and speeches, and so had only to give a few on any occasion.. Most of that was left to other people, the powers that be having very quickly realized that I would probably only inflame the conversations more, and manage to get several people to say rather disadvantageous things for themselves as they attempted to defend whatever stand their news group wanted them to take.

After Davies left, there were only trivial matters to discuss. In this office, we didn't mention anything that could get out, because I didn't have the time or patience to be continually sweeping the walls, the carpet…anything that could get bugged. Instead, we went into the new bike, and I told him everything that he'd missed in that arena. I had it stripped, and the parts had begun to trickle in, so we were ready to get down to the actual adaptations now. We made plans to that effect, and when he left, I did so as well, to inform Une of Duo's missing knife.

She, however, wasn't in. She'd left barely before I got there according to the janitor cleaning out the trash cans, which left me to resolve the issue in the morning.

* * *

As it happened, I wasn't able to get up to Une's office until just before I was supposed to meet Sally for lunch, and when I got there, Une had already had heard about the knife through Duo, the man himself deciding that it would just be better to make sure that everyone who needed to know would be informed. So other than a trip designed to elevate my annoyance level, there was absolutely no reason for me to go see her. A waste of time. 

Then, as I was leaving, none other than Ms. Dowldon ran straight into me. She had been asking Une's secretary a question, had begun turning away from his desk…and that was right where I was in that moment. She fell back, the various folders in her hands going everywhere, and it took me a moment to actually respond in any way that might help, because my first reaction hadn't been anything that might constitute "assisting".

So by the time that I had knelt down to help gather the scattered papers, both she and Hamilton, Une's secretary, were already doing it. I contented myself with picking up the ones that had really scattered, glancing at them while I was doing it and seeing the "Confidential" and "Classified" stamps emblazoned across the top of them all. Gundam schematics. I frowned down onto them.

"Ms. Dowldon…what are these?"

When I looked up at her, she seemed flustered, or maybe embarrassed, but I couldn't tell what it was for, yet.

She took them back from me, firmly, and replied. "Those are the original notes that my mother had." She gave me a small, sad smile. "She's the reason the seminar was being held, it was her idea." She was shuffling them back together then. "But those are classifie…oh. I forgot." Now she was embarrassed, but seemed amused, too, and shrugged. "I'm dropping them off for Commander Une, because they have to be locked up, now."

I must have been staring at her like an idiot, because she began to look nervous. It took me a moment to recollect myself, but when I did, I pointed to the papers, "Do you mean they haven't been locked up?"

Still nervous, eyes wide, she shook her head. "No…" Again, she shrugged, and stood up. "When my mother died, I asked Lady if she wanted them locked up, but she said that it was okay, there wasn't any real need, that these weren't anything but the non-essential areas anyway."

I relaxed back onto my heels and stood up, no longer ready to rake both this girl and Une over any convenient coals. "Ah."

We were standing there, awkwardly for a moment, when she tilted her head and broke the silence with a question. "Speaking of which, Captain...I have a question for you."

I raised my eyebrows. "Another one?"

She smiled, quite bright, with her eyes meeting mine unhesitant. "That's my job, you know, to ask questions, and attend classes to get them answered. But yes, another one." She held up the stack of papers. "These, and even the lectures, which are now over…they don't give anything _but_ the non-essential pieces." Now she was frowning. "There's none of the systems that made the different suits unique, or any of the upgrades that they received—or were rumored to have received several times throughout the conflicts."

I glanced over at Hamilton, busy over his desk, but I knew that there was no real safe place to discuss anything related to this outside of several places too far removed from where we were then. Une could deal with Hamilton.

So I focused back onto the girl. "Ms. Dowldon—"

She cut me off with a head shake. "Oh, please don't call me that. Sam's just fine, really." My expression didn't change.

"_Sam_. Those systems were never fully released by the pilots, though they assured us that they would, should any need for them to be released arise." I shrugged. "Really, there's nothing we can do about it, except to wait until they feel secure enough to divulge them. The original designers are all dead, they died in 195, so we have no alternate sources." Which we were all quite happy with, except for a few of the more zealous of our prodders, which mainly consisted of Une, Relena, and _then_ by any of the thousands of other politicians that had tried to coerce us into supplying them with the prints, and all of them for different reasons.

She was focusing on me intently, and it was somewhat unnerving, meeting her gaze as she thought that through. "So, in other words…say some group discovers the methods used, and then they figure out that they could _sell_ these ideas, and the pilots get wind of it. _Then_ the schematics are going to be available, to dissuade the public?" Now she was obviously both resigned, and irritated. "We're depending on the pilots' good will for that technology?"

I nodded, not at all disturbed by that prospect. I'd already shown too many people into the heart of the world's terrors, I wasn't going to support any more of it.

She appeared disappointed, but without the bitterness I would have associated with a defeat. Then she looked at me with interest. "I don't suppose you'd have anyway of guessing when that might be?"

I know I was very serious when I replied. "They have made us aware that their hopes are not for a very, very long time." Knowing that she was going into some field that applied to the technology, I wanted to cement in her the fact that these were not good or nice things that would be in those undisclosed plans. "None of the systems that were withheld were good for much more, right now, than destruction."

Her expression was equally serious as she listened to me, but it lost its solemnity somewhat after a moment. "I guess I'll have to take your word on that, Captain."

After having made a point out of my address to her, her use of my rank made me curious, so, having known from an early age that the best way to learn about something was to ask about it, I did. "Why, if I am to address you by your given name, and then, even with a diminutive form of it, do you address me by my rank?"

She was unhesitating with an answer, and smiled at me as well. "I assume that you've worked hard to get that mark of distinction, so it would be a sign of disrespect for me to address you as something else, even by 'Mr. Chang'—which also has the added problem of sounding rather weird, considering the fact that, at most, you're a year older than I am." She tilted her head to side, and her smile grew wider. "If that."

I was late to meet Sally for lunch, but greater than the compulsion for me to be on time, I felt a need to examine this interesting morality she was avowing. Which didn't make sense to me later on, but then, I'd always been one to follow what I felt like doing, more than anything else.

"So you're saying that I _couldn't_ have you address me by anything other than 'captain'?"

She shook her head, smile still firmly there. "No. I _might_ use your name…but not here. Here, you're very much Captain Chang, Preventers."

"I see." I was considering a reply, some further question that might explain what she meant, but my phone rang, urging me to answer it with a high pitched chime. I pulled it out of the holster I kept it in, and answered it with "Chang", as normally as I ever did.

Sally, on the other end of the line, laughed. "Whoa, stand down there, Wu Fei." I could hear her amusement threaded throughout her voice. Apparently, she had decided that I'd been not quite as normal as I was on the end of her line. "You do know that you're late for lunch, right?"

I glared at nothing in particular, and saw "Sam's" curious face out of the corner of my eye. "Yes, Sally, I was quite aware that I was late, thank you." The girl's face sharpened with curiosity. "I'm still coming."

"Ah, that's good. I was beginning to wonder what could have captured your attention, and made you late. I was worried for the state of the union." The woman almost sounded serious.

I was gritting my teeth by then. "No need to worry. I'm sure Relena could solve anything by this point." I _willed_ myself to relax, because I knew otherwise, the first thing I'd do when I got to the restaurant would be to glare a hole into her head. "Just give me a moment."

"Okay. Do you want me to order for you? Anything you want in particular?"

"No, go right ahead. You would anyway."

"Then I'll see you in a little bit." The line went dead, and I had visions of the woman happily ordering up whatever she thought I might like…interspersed with things she knew I wouldn't. Damn her, and her suggestion that we eat some type of food I hadn't experienced yet.

Sam was still standing where she had been, and hadn't even made any move to get away, though many people, when faced with a person on a phone, would make a gesture or something to indicate leaving them to it, or even sitting down, and waiting. She'd stood there, with that same expression of curiosity.

When I was off the phone, and rubbing my forehead in resignation, she was the first to speak again. "Well, it appears that I've made you late, Captain."

I stopped the ministrations that wouldn't be of any help until I had the headache I knew Sally was going to give me, and glanced at her. "I don't think you were the one who made me late. That would be putting too much into your hands."

She smiled again. "Mnm. Would it…Well, perhaps we'll run into each other again, Captain." She frowned, and rubbed the small of her back. "Though I hope it's not literally."

I nodded at her. "Then have a good day, Sam."

Her smile widened. "And you as well!"

I turned to walk out the door, and she, I assume, continued on to Une's office.

Most of the walk to the parking lot, even the trip to the restaurant was a blur, later. It'd become so many months ago, when I'd truly fallen into the use of it. Once you've done it a thousand times, or memorized it to the point of pure submersion, it becomes possible to go from point A to point Epsilon, without remembering the many steps in between. It was a session in the cockpit of a mobile suit, the first, and last step that you thought about, was merely putting your fingers down on the right keys. After that, there was no real connection between thought and action.

I guess that told me how many times I'd been to Une's office, or the small Italian restaurant that Sally and I ate lunch at all the time.

I'd just pleasantly forgotten that she had convinced me to eat somewhere else. Which meant that, sitting at the light to pull out of the Preventers' parking lot, I lost my reverie, and had to pull to mind the map I'd glanced at, showing me how to get to the restaurant.

I made it, and Sally was already halfway through a bowl of soup when I sat down across from her.

She glanced up at me from where she'd been looking—the bowl of her spoon. Trying to decide what was so interesting about it, I leaned forward a little bit, to look into the bowl of her spoon, and she dropped it into her bowl, chuckling when several splashes hit me in the face.

I sat back with a glare and used my napkin to wipe my face off with. I knew better than to say anything, because she'd come up with something smart-ass in reply.

She was happily laughing away for a few seconds, and was still chuckling when she went back to her soup, occasional bursts of laughter making her pause with her spoon halfway to her mouth. I stayed silent, and attempted to not brood and glare. If I did, she'd find many excuses to make the rest of lunch absolutely miserable, and if I tried to get completely angry, she'd use logic to show me what an asshole I was being.

How I let myself be convinced by her, I have no idea, but I did it consistently, and somehow, at the time, her logic would be perfectly clear. When I looked back at it, it seemed to be completely different, and I couldn't follow it.

I think she took as much joy in that as she did over the fact that she could now get away with things such as splashing soup into my face, and I had given up on trying to make her stop.

Her first words, when she'd stopped enjoying the residual amusement, were much more serious than one might expect after her outburst.

"So, where were you?"

I sat there with my arms crossed over my chest, debating what she wanted to know this time. Deciding that she'd pull it out anyway, using whatever means necessary, I gave up trying to figure it out, and broke through the embargo I'd placed on speech after her prank.

"I ran into somebody coming out of Une's office, and we were discussing some aspects of the lectures I gave." I stared at her, waiting for whatever she was going to say.

She raised eyebrows at me. "Hm? You ran into somebody, huh? Someone from the class?"

I nodded. "Yes. She was dropping off her mother's papers, her mother being the one responsible for the class in the first place."

Sally looked interested, even going so far as putting her spoon down, the better to lean forward, and focus on me. "Really." She propped one elbow on the table, only to pull it off when, not two seconds later, the server appeared, placing the dishes down in front of us. I looked at mine, and had no idea what it was.

There was some sort of green lasagna thing in the middle of the plate, surrounded by little green chunks, what looked like maybe some sort of plant leaf. I looked up at Sally, questioningly.

"What is this?"

"Dolmades and spanakopita."

I leveled a firm stare at her. "That doesn't tell me what it is, only what it's _called_."

She smiled. "Fine, fine. It's stuffed grape leaves and spinach pie. That's all."

A fork seemed to be the best way to investigate it, before I actually went for a taste. She laughed at me, and dove into her own, which, looking at, I still didn't recognize, but it looked remarkably like a roasted meat with normal vegetables.

I ate the lunch, but I decided that the one was a little too salty for me, and the other too rich. Thankfully, I wasn't as unhappy about the entire experience as I could have been. She hadn't yet pulled up the fact that since she was a doctor along with her normal agential duties, she had access to my records, and so she knew that I hadn't taken a vacation since I'd started. She felt that should be remedied, told me about it at length, nearly every single time I saw her, it was one of her more sore points with me.

She also hadn't grilled me on anything else that had happened recently. No. So far, all she'd done was order different food, and splashed me on purpose with her soup. A rather mild lunch.

I must have been staring at my empty plate for some time, because my gaze was interrupted by her hand waving in it, and when I looked up at her, she smiled, a wry, half smile.

"Wow, Wu Fei, you were really off in La La Land." Her smile broadened. "What's pulled you into contemplation?"

I met her smiling eyes with my own serious ones, and blinked a few times, focusing my thoughts onto her in the present, rather than the past. "You."

She sat back with both an amused and a slightly worried expression. "Me?" She looked a little confused, but then she seemed as poised as she was most of the time. "Finally planning on how to get me back for all the things I've wounded your pride with, Wu Fei?"

With a head shake, I took a drink from my water glass. "No. More on why you do them in the first place, if you know that they annoy me." I met her now serious eyes across the table.

Her elbows found their way onto the table, her chin firmly resting on one hand as she contemplated me, and perhaps her answer, as well. Then, just as abruptly as she'd become serious, she sat back, and folded her arms across the front of her uniform.

"You take everything so seriously. I worry about it, sometimes, and when I do, I decide how to make you see that you don't have to take _others_ as seriously as you do yourself." She shrugged. "Which isn't to say that it's not necessary to take others seriously, as well, a lot of the time. I'm just attempting to show you that it's all right to sometimes _not._" She smiled again, a very secure, placid composure sealing her features into poise. "Balance in all things, Wu Fei."

I stared at her face, sorting through that concept in my head, and when I had settled it into a place where I could pull it out later, and examine it better, I nodded once, and said, "I see."

Her arms dropped to her lap, and she leaned forward again. "Do you? I'm not sure, yet, but we'll see."

The rest of lunch—and the rest of the day—passed by in a blur that wasn't wasted time, just full of all the procedure and routine that made it, just as that trip from Une's office to the parking lot, so very trivial and unimportant to remember.

* * *

Duo was already at my house when I got home, sitting on the top stoop, duffle bag sitting behind him, allowing him to lean up against it, with his ultimate support being the wall behind it. He shot me a lazy wave when I pulled up, and the garage door opened. He didn't follow me in, waiting instead for me to go through the house and open the front door for him. He had an aversion for going through anything but the front door when he wasn't trying to do something clandestinely. A throwback to our lesser times. 

"I'm set up in the shed, in the back." He laughed at me as I threw a grimace at the many bikes lined up in the garage attached to the house.

"You're the one with the bike fetish, 'Fei."

Now the grimace was at him, as he called me that. I'd given up trying to explain to him exactly why it didn't appeal to me. He usually came up with very inventive ways to say I was being ridiculous over a small thing. After that, we would usually change the subject, attempting to keep the peace as we both knew that, as far as individual outlooks went, we were far too similar, and _dissimilar_, and we realized that our friendship depended on us holding out, and not pushing some things. Such as small, insignificant things that didn't make sense to the other, like a name, and to Duo, that was the thing. He could understand it with himself, not wanting to be called by anything other than what he had named _himself_. For those of us named by other people, he took absolute liberty with. To him, his own name was sacred. All of the rest of us, we had, perhaps with the exception of Trowa, who, although he'd merely taken the name after someone else, had chosen to keep it as a good name at the end of the second war, merely been given names.

More often than not, I had the feeling that he'd have been happier calling us by our Preventers' codenames, because those had been chosen by us.

It certainly wasn't one-sided, this setup we had, where I could ignore something like that, because I could understand where he was coming from. He too stayed quiet, and let me go on with some of the things that I needed to vent on, even if he didn't agree with my view on it. Such as why I was with the Preventers, and would be, merely for ideals. He occasionally would rally to the cause, but he thought, and understood from his upbringing, that there were some things that couldn't be solved perfectly. Not without cauterization, which he couldn't agree with either.

Sally said it was the normal give and take in any friendship. I told her that I hadn't had any friendships since grade-school, and she'd smiled, saying that now was a perfect time to make up for it.

Duo pulled me out of my contemplations when we reached the shed, by taking a look into the sorting I'd done for the parts we'd ordered.

"Hm…what _is_ this?" He held up one of the boxes with a large picture on all the sides, holding it out for me.

I took it from him, glancing at it, and looking at the invoice number it'd come on. "Add on for the alternator. Helps boost."

He raised eyebrows at me, more an impression anyway, considering the fact that his eyebrows weren't really visible through the rough hair over his face. "Uh huh. I'm hoping we didn't pay extra for this…" He let it trail off.

I shook my head. "No, it was part of the package that had the most usable parts for the fuel conversion."

He smiled. "Oh, good. I can give this to Howard, then, to minimize out-of-pocket for the rest of the parts, then." He began to sort through the rest of the different piles, reorganizing the order I'd had. I watched him for only about a minute, before speaking up.

"What was wrong with how they were ordered the first time?"

He was squatting down on his heels in the middle, and so I could see most of his face as he looked up. "Well, here, you have them all sorted by function…" He gestured. "But if we order them up by when we need them, we'll be done faster, and all that." He began to pivot back to his sorting, but looked up again at the last minute. "Oh, and, then we'll know what we're missing, in order."

That made sense, and I nodded to show that, and began to help him, now understanding his method. We soon finished, working in tandem, and, while we stared at the new configuration of parts, sat at the work bench, studying it, looking for the weak links in our part chain. We wanted to be able to see which parts would have to be sent back, _before_ we attempted to use them on the bike. There always seemed to be a few of them. Some we already knew about, those were the ones that we would trade to Howard for the parts not available on the open market. Some we just wouldn't know we could circumnavigate before we tried to use them, or before we thought of ways to do it.

I guess that was one of the things we were carrying over. It was the teachings of need versus what was on hand. If we wanted or needed it bad enough, we were knowledgeable enough on systems to discover new ways to do things.

I shook myself out of my thoughts, and went back to concentrating on the parts, and Duo's muttering. He'd already gone onto whatever part he wanted to start with, and was busy pulling apart the packaging, making sure he had the directions in front of him. Thos he would study carefully, and then probably find a source of information elsewhere, before he'd recommend to me a variation.

I chose my own parts set to begin working on, and sat down with him at the bench, although a good distance away.

After he'd dug into it, he began to pull up conversation, beginning with, "So what have you been up to while I was on the job?"

I glanced at him, and went back to my instructions. "Not much."

He had a snort of laughter for that one. It was usually what I told him.

"How did you lose a knife, anyway?" I looked at him curiously, until after he'd looked back up at me, with a shrug.

"I decided that I'd scare him. Thought that might be the best way to get him to stay where he was while they were busy looking for the door into that room." Another shrug. "It worked."

I nodded down to my open box, studying the filter inside still. "It did work. They got a clean arrest, instead of the very messy chase it could have been." Now I was frowning into my box. "You know, I think we need to get a better filter."

He looked over at my box, before actually standing up to come look at it. "Yeah? Okay."

I sighed, and folded the box back up, creating with it a new pile for returns.

I couldn't seem to concentrate enough right then to pick up a new piece of the puzzle we were working on, so all I ended up doing was sitting backwards on the stool, arms crossed over my chest, as I brooded into the air, staring for one moment on the stripped down bike, the next on the plain board walls of the shed.

Duo eventually decided to comment, after many minutes of my inaction. "What's up?"

I sighed with a frown, still not looking at anything in particular. My thoughts were on that girl, and I told him so, saying, "I ran into that girl from the lecture today in Une's office."

It took him a minute to respond, and when he did, it was simply with a belatedly startled, "Huh?"

I turned to frown at him. "You know, the girl from the lecture who asked me about Deathscythe."

He stared back at me. "Yeah, I remembered her. What was she doing in Une's office?"

"Oh." I shrugged. "She was dropping off her mother's notes."

With a nod, he went back to the bench. "Ah. So you ran into her? And?"

"Well, actually, she ran into me, literally." He laughed. "And then she asked me about the suits again."

He cleared his throat. "Uh huh. I'll bet that was fun."

I looked at him dryly. "That wasn't exactly how I'd describe it, but it was interesting, and made me realize that we need to come up with something official, if they're going to be putting these things out there."

I could see him shrug from the corner of my eye. "I'll tell Quatre and Relena. They're the idea machines."

"Fine, that will be good." We lapsed back into silence for a while, and still I felt no desire to dig through things on the floor, to find something to begin working with. He was quite happily engrossed with the innards of the parts, and I couldn't settle down.

Now, I was thinking about that girl, Sam. "Duo?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think that sometimes it's all right to be impulsive?"

I don't know if he looked up or not, but his reply was a little more clear in the air than it should have been if he had not. "Yeah, sure. Time and place for everything, and all that." I nodded, and left him there, going into the house to cook something for dinner.


	3. Chapter 3

Credibility Ch. III

——————————————————————————

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.  
_George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) "Man and Superman" (1903) Act I_

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason.  
_Thomas Carlyle_

Idiotic, retarded safety reports. I knew in exacting detail _why_ I had to do them. But having to check and double check after every single person under me that used any of the company vehicles pushed my limits on ass wiping, as Trowa has so aptly put it once. So every time this week came, or once a quarter, I'd be in a foul mood while everyone tiptoed around. Those who had to actually drop something off for me to validate would get appropriately glared at, and muttered to and about, and heaven help them if they'd messed something up on the form, as my patience only stretched so far, and already worn thin, I didn't appreciate much about the general human populace. To validate every single one, _I_ had to call down to the shop and _personally_ verify that each and every vehicle _had_ been inspected, and _had_ been accounted for. It was an inconvenience for me. Then, after I finished with it all, I had to hand deliver the report to Une, as if internal mail wasn't secure enough to drop off _vehicle_ inspections. Just one of the loops we had to jump through to get the funding from the new government.

I suppose that it's a perfect opportunity to be less than charitable once a quarter. Add that general leaning to the fact that, once again, I had to see Une for something completely, ridiculously trivial, and I was ready to chew nails for entertainment.

Une doesn't have comfortable chairs in her outer office. They looked comfortable from a distance, but the closer you got, the more dubious that description was, until you actually sat down, and you felt cheated, because they were quite the opposite of what you'd originally thought.

The fact that I was thinking such thoughts meant I needed coffee, or some other form of caffeine. I had one hand over my eyes, rubbing at the strain they didn't have, but should have, after the week they'd been through, when someone sat down next to me.

From the quick glance I got in at the person from out of the corner of one eye, they were wearing slacks and black dress shoes. Probably a woman, from the way they had their feet crossed at the ankles, tucked underneath the chair, compounded with the very light floral scent that had appeared.

Really, though, I was much more interested in finding out whether or not I could just dig my eyeballs out, and make them stop the imaginary aching that way. And then maybe my brain, too, which was really the sore point, not my eyes. But the person sitting next to me spoke, and I had to drag myself away from my self-abused eyes. Friday mornings should be abolished on general principle.

"Well, Captain, I guess we just have an Une dependency issue to get over."

Recognition popped up the second she spoke: Ms. Dowldon. I looked at her for a moment, trying to decipher what she meant, and she looked back at me, but she got uncomfortable after a minute or so, and began to explain herself a little.

"Because we keep meeting up like this. Feels like an AA meeting, or something. Regular scheduled time, and everything." She'd made vague gestures around the area, too, to indicate something.

I just shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I still don't get it."

She shrugged. "Ah. Well, I ran into you last Friday morning, so it's sort of as if we had a scheduled meeting, for, perhaps, group therapy." She smiled. "There's even the really uncomfortable chairs."

The reference dawned on me from the one and only time they'd been able to make me see the house psychiatrist. Uncomfortable chairs. That looked comfortable. So I nodded to indicate that I understood, and ran an internal debate on whether or not to try some of the coffee over by the secretary. Hamilton, Une's secretary, was notoriously bad at making coffee though, so it was a question of, one, get it, and die from mud poisoning, or two, expire from lack of energy and mugginess. An open debate.

The girl saw where I was staring, and shook her head. "Don't do it. I tried it, and it's really, really, really bad."

I made a deprecating noise. "Oh, I know it's horrible. But the cafeteria is worse, and I'm not sure if I can last until I have enough of an excuse to run out of the building for decent caffeine."

She choked on a laugh. "Oh, god. Bad day?" She was smiling at me invitingly, obviously offering conversation.

I shook my head. "Just dancing attendance on those who give us funding. And I was up too late last night. And it's Friday morning."

She raised her eyebrows at me, and shifted in her chair, to be facing more towards me. "Oh, yeah? Have to love that, needing to do things for funding." She grinned. "Same thing that happens to professors, they have to show something for all the grants they get. But what's so bad about Friday mornings?"

Since she was interested enough to ask, and I thought that perhaps it might make the time go a little faster, I explained the reasoning behind why I disliked the morning so much. Because everyone was so interested in getting out of the building, they rushed, and I was usually left picking up the pieces they missed. It was, therefore, an especially bad day, on top of the whole, enthusiasm-from-other-people part. She found that suitably amusing, which I found interesting in turn, since I'd been told on more than one occasion that I had a strange sense of humor by Sally and Une and even Duo, who had much too strange a humor to be pointing fingers at anybody.

After I finished, she was shaking her head with quiet laughter, and I was staring, brooding off into space again.

With one last chuckle, she pushed back a strand of hair away from her face, making me glance at the motion, and I saw that her eyes were blue. "And if that's on top of too little sleep, I can certainly understand the need for caffeine, of very nearly any quality value."

I snorted agreement. Une was taking a long time for a meeting that wasn't scheduled. She hadn't had any meetings set up before noon today, and _she'd_ called _me_ up over half an hour ago.

I glanced at the girl. "So what are you doing here yet again?"

She shook her head, and sighed. "I missed a paper." She held up another file from where it was on her lap, and then gave a small laugh. "But this is the very _last_ one. I pulled her entire study apart, and all of the cars, too, and didn't find any more."

Thinking of something that had been puzzling me from the very beginning, after I'd learned about her mother's interest, I felt my facial muscles tightening as I frowned. "Why was your mother so fixed on the Gundams in the first place?"

Her eyebrows raised a little as she turned towards me. "Hm?" I raised my eyebrows at her in return, and she shook her head. "I don't know _why_, exactly, but I know that she was fascinated with them." She was staring off into space now. "When I was younger, she spent so much time designing things, inventing new ways to do the things that engineers were doing already, across so many different fields."

He felt her pause, felt that it wasn't the end of the explanation. "But?"

As she met my eyes, hers were slightly confused, and serious. "But after the Gundams appeared, she wanted nothing more than to turn what she saw of their fantastic designs, the wonderful ingenuity of them all, and use that to fuel new ways of doing the things she'd always done." She turned back to the main room of the outer office, and stared into the space occupied by the disgusting coffee maker. "More often than not, now, I think that those suit specs weren't actually what she was after, but instead, she wanted to fuel her own imagination with the mechanical delights they presented."

I studied the girl's profile intently, piecing together what I could remember from the file I'd read about Dr. Dowldon. "Was she pacifistic?"

She looked at me, startled. "My mother?" She shook her head. "Not really, but she wasn't as interested in war as most you meet." She smiled again. "But she _was_ a fan of the Queen."

I raised my eyebrows. "Relena?" I snorted. "She'll ramble on all day about the need to work peacefully together—even _after_ she's gotten most of her way already."

She grinned at me a little. "Isn't it, like, against the rules for you to say anything bad about your boss' boss?"

I grimaced. "Neither of them really care enough about my opinion to do anything about it."

Eyebrows raised, she had a slightly surprised look on her face, and waited a second to say anything. Perhaps she was attempting to be diplomatic. "Surely they care what you think, or what people in general do?"

"Oh, Relena cares a very small amount about public opinion, unless they're not doing whatever she wants—essentially anything that includes fighting—and then she has no trouble getting them to eat out of her hand. She's proven that many times. Lady Une _does not_ care. She's there, in that office, solely to keep the peace." I could feel the frown settle deeper on to my face. "Une has _never_ cared for public opinion, or anyone's, really, up to and including mine." Except, apparently from what my intel could tell me, her dead commander's. Whose she still coveted, or so said Sally, the only one of my somewhat contemporaries that tried to breach the ivory tower that was the Commander's office.

The girl shifted back in her chair, staring off as she either absorbed that, or decided to stay away from someone who expressed those types of opinions. Perhaps she'd be quiet, and I could go back to brooding.

I never did get that luck, because although she certainly was quiet for a few minutes, after she'd done whatever thinking on that she wanted to—which was interesting in and of itself, considering the fact that both women were very well respected, or, in Relena's case, universally loved, and I'd just expressed less than flattering opinions about them both—she shifted forward, and towards me again, obviously intent on entering back into conversation.

I was hardly uninterested in hearing what she'd say now, because, as she had in the past, I was now thinking she often entered in her opinion unasked for. It might have been the fact that she had somehow decided that, although I had never encouraged it, her opinion was of vital interest to me, apparently not put off by the fact that I was usually not as patient with the general populace as many.

"You know, that wasn't quite fair."

I tilted an eye at her from the side. "How so? What I said is completely true."

She was looking at me dead on, no sly glances to the side. "Because _now_, I'm going to have to go through and look at some of their broadcasts to see if it was the _absolute_ truth, or just your take on it, and that's going to wreck havoc on the history paper I have to turn in next Friday, because this whole question is—"

"Do you like kiwi?" If all else fails, distract.

Sam, still apparently lost in the middle of her sentence, looked blank. "Huh?"

I shrugged. "Kiwifruit. Do you like them?"

She seemed a little off balance, but that was good. "Yeah, I guess." Now she was both confused and curious. "Why?"

Again, I shrugged. "I have some in my office, it's lunch hour, and I'm tired of waiting."

Her eyes steady, I think I saw the exact moment when her brain caught up with the situation. "Oh." She glanced at Une's office door. "Do you think it's a good idea to leave? I mean…I need to leave this," she held up the folder, "with her…and I'm sure she'll be done soon…" She sounded unsure, though.

With a snort, I leaned back, arms crossed. "We wouldn't be leaving. And it's hardly our fault that she's taking so long. It's unfair for us to wait for her for this long, when I know she didn't have any appointments scheduled for a three hour block, and we're both here on her bequest." And I was quite tired of Hamilton. Certainly Une had him as her secretary for a reason. I just didn't even want to know why.

She continued to look indecisive for a moment, and then nodded at me, picked the small portfolio back up from she she'd dropped it in her lap, and pulled her purse up from the floor by its strap. We both stood up, and I went straight across the office to Hamilton, informing in a less than patient voice that we'd _both_ be in _my_ office, if Une ever decided to see us.

Then we went to the elevator, and down the floor to my office, where I closed the door and distributed out my reserve of kiwi fruit, my one spoon and a paper towel to each of us. I'd started keeping various fruit, but most often kiwis, on hand a long time ago, because sometimes I didn't want to go out and spend exorbitant amounts of money on food that was questionable at best. Although Duo forcefully told me plenty of times that you _could_ survive on fast food and take out rather cheaply, and do it in a manner that was at least more half good for you than not. I tended to look at him skeptically while all others looked at him in amusement, except for Quatre, who smiled, and said something along the lines of, "But do we _want_ to eat that much fast food? Even _if_ we were forced to due to budget concerns?"

The most annoying thing was that Duo seldom ate out at all. He just claimed that it was survivable.

So I kept something in my office to keep me from having to survive off of it.

I let Sam have the spoon. Being a gentleman, I suppose. That, and it was nearly as easy for me to peel the things with the pocket knife I kept in my desk drawer anyway.

Several minutes later, and she was using the spoon I'd given up to scrape the last little bit that she could out of the first half of the skin; occasionally she'd shoot a look at me from under her eyelashes. It took me all of thirty seconds after the last one to decide enough was enough, and call her on it.

"What?"

She glanced up fully, startled, but had the grace to face me, even if it was with a slight blush and a smile, which slowly grew. "Well…" She paused as she cleaned the spoon off before it could drip. "I was just wondering if this is a lunch date or not."

I felt like I'd just been punched in the gut, and it took me a moment to come to terms with what she'd said just standing by itself, and then, in the silence that lapsed again, as she started in on the second half of her current fruit, my thoughts scattered around and finally fell into place with a thunk. I was analyzing what she'd meant by that, and what my first initial response was other than a resounding "No". And since, at some point in the pinball imitation going on in my head, I knew she was being absolutely serious, she was, therefore, offering it to me. I responded late, instead of throwing my "no" out there immediately, which I'm sure I would have done at so many other points in my life, and answered her "wondering", with a question.

"Do you want it to be?"

Her spoon stopped, and she tilted her head to the side, thinking, and making me regret, briefly, being forward enough to say that in the first place. But then she smiled again, and looked at me. "No. Because I'd think that would be much too easy, don't you?"

I frowned at her. "Maybe. But then, that still leaves me in a place where I would have to, hypothetically, think of something else, and that's more difficult, isn't it?"

Smiling fully now, she set her mostly eaten fruit down on the edge of my desk on her paper towel. "Is it? So difficult to think of?" Despite her fairly jovial manner, I knew she was again asking a serious question, it was sitting there in her eyes.

Meeting those eyes was both difficult and not, as I let the thoughts she'd raised percolate through the many layers they had to before they could come up against the nerve endings that controlled my tongue, and speech. "No." I paused, and observed how she responded to that, with a twitch in her smile, a slight hitch in her breath. "It might even be enjoyable."

She held my eyes for a little longer before she picked up the kiwi fruit to polish off the last of it, letting quiet fall after her final comment of, "Then I'll have to consider _that_ a date." Silence resumed interspersed only with the slight squishing noises that accompanied her spoon in the fruit.

In the end, Une was the one to find us, not the other way around. It made me think of Hamilton again, up guarding the gates to her lair…and taking down messages for her if she didn't feel like devouring anybody right then.

She interrupted the quiet when she opened my door without knocking, and then didn't even have the decency to look slightly annoyed. Instead, she just stood ramrod straight in the doorway, in the strange cross between the diplomat and the Colonel that still had the ability to unnerve me. Not that I'd let someone so used to being my enemy, for all that our wars were over two years ago, see any lack of composure on my part.

"Chang. Samantha." She didn't move in any farther. "Please accept my apologies, but I had an emergency vid conference with some ministers of the council, and it couldn't be interrupted or reconvened." She raised eyebrows at me. "I assume you have the safety reports well in hand?"

I replied just as drolly as she'd stated it, nodding at the stack sitting on the file cabinet next to the door. "And you'll excuse me if I don't personally _hand_ them to you, Ma'am." Une just snorted and tucked them under one arm.

"And Samantha? Your mother's last paper?"

Sam, mouth full, nodded, wiped her hands, swallowed, stood up, picked up her papers, and handed them to Une. "Last one, I'm absolutely positive about it."

Une layered the two small portfolios in one pile. "Good." She stopped hesitantly for a second, half turned away. "I'll…leave you to your lunch then." Then she was gone, and I was staring at the door before Sam cleared her throat.

When I looked up at her, she was wiping her hands off, and she smiled at me. "When will you pick me up than?"

I could feel my eyebrows climbing my forehead while my brain caught up with her, and it scrambled to come up with something suitable to say.

"Uhm." A pause. "Hm. Let me look at something, and I'll give you a call this evening?" I was staring at her now, my turn to be vaguely confused. "Would that be okay?"

Her smile grew. "Sure. Do you have something I could write my number on?"

I nodded, and pulled one of my cards out of the holder that stood on the front edge of my desk, handing that and a pen from my drawer to her. She wrote out her name and number in neat all caps, handing it back.

Then she stood up, collecting her handbag on the way, and made her way to the door with a smile. "Then…I'll see you later, Wu Fei." And she closed the door after she exited.

Leaving me with the card, number side facing up, sitting in front of me while I stared off into space and thought about the myriad different things you could do on a date.

She'd liked my offering of fruit, especially after I'd explained the custom, but, as I thought she might, had left it on a side table that was right next to the door with hardly a pause before she'd stepped out and locked her house. The evening was pleasant, much as the weather I'd checked had indicated it would be, so I knew that a walk would be good. That would get us out of any confined area, and let us talk, and then, if we saw anything of interest, there might be a good conversational point.

* * *

It was the sheer randomness of the idea that actually appealed to me. Certainly, walks were recommended in what I'd looked up as far as dating ideas went, but I also thought that it would be a good way for me to try to relax.

I did also let the fact that I wanted to see her in as unstructured an environment as I could sway my decision, and it helped when I presented it to her over the vid phone yesterday. During that conversation, she had given me directions, and I'd avowed to pick her up.

We had walked in companionable silence for several minutes, but that wasn't what I had planned, companionable or not, so, to spark something into life, I waited until the perfect moment, when the swing of her hand and the swing of mine intercepted, and took hers, wrapping it quickly in mine. She turned her head for a moment, smiled at me, and started to swing our joined hands back and forth, at first briskly and then letting them fall to their own rhythm, which, I noted absently, was some mixture of both of our individual swings. It was interesting, to see something happen so simply.

Not even thirty seconds later, she pulled our hands up, holding them for a second in front of us, and spoke.

"You know, Wu Fei…I don't get you, really."

I raised an eyebrow at her, letting my eyes scan the background of the pleasant park beyond her. "How do you mean?"

She smiled again. "Well, you do this fabulous job of making everyone in that lecture absolutely positive that you live for the Preventers, and, somehow, the tiny little details of mobile suits that only a true scientist would care about."

I shook my head, watching the cement of the sidewalk passing slowly by under our feet. "And? What if that's really all that there is?"

She shook her head quickly, clenching her hand in mine briefly. "No, you can't actually get away with that, because then you show this side of you, the one that laughs, a little, jokes about bad coffee, throws sarcastic comments in Lady's face…argues with your friend, Duo, over which parts are going to work the best. No, Wu Fei, I think you're very hard to figure out, indeed." I felt her hand tighten a little again, and she finished with, "And you think up fabulous ways to wine and dine me, too!" She swung our hands hard there, to over-emphasize her point before, she squeezed again, and looked up at me to smile. "Sorta." She laughed a little, and ended with, "You're just lucky I like fruit."

I raised an eyebrow at her, and half-smiled, letting it lapse back into silence for another minute, during which we reached the end of the park, and began to approach the small commercial district that was on the way to the restaurant I'd picked out and had reservations at.

The district was more a walking one than somewhere to drive, and it had small shops ranging from an upscale shoe store to what looked like a combination tattoo parlor/second hand music store, and in the middle a little park-like area that echoed the one we'd just walked along.

"Would you like to go into one of the stores?"

We'd stopped, and she let my hand fall after giving it one more small pressure, and was looking up at me, staring at me with a frown on her face. Then she shook her head, and nodded towards where we'd come from, "Yeah, sure. That bookstore looked interesting."

I nodded, and set off for that, with her beside me, noticing when we came parallel that the books displayed in the window were still focused mainly on the war, or things along the lines of, _What To Do Now_ or, _The Life and Times of the Last Peacecraft King: Before the War_. I ignored them after one quick glance, and followed her into the store, letting her lead me around.

Actually, I was letting her show me into her mind passively, through the things she looked at. The trail of that thought led to the one I'd circled around so many times already. Why, exactly, did she find me so interesting? Interesting enough to make the first moves, when I'd acted to her exactly as I had to any of the other offers of dates in the past. With an internal smirk, though, I had to admit that no one else had been interesting enough in turn to make me take the offer up.

I'd let her continue to make the first moves, I think. That would show me what to expect.

* * *

Too many weeks went by for me not to notice them, but they went so fast that when I looked up and saw Sally looming over my desk with a jovial look on her face, I almost thought that there was some major disaster in inter-satellite politics and she needed big guns, so I'd have to make some embarrassing calls. It was only after I'd been racking my brain for a way out of it this time when her less than serious expression registered and I forced my adrenaline levels back down and started worrying.

"What the hell are you doing here?" As usual, I was absolutely blunt and direct with her, because it was Sally. Better safe than not, in her case, and my position.

Her teeth flashed at me, assuring me once again that she only looked nice, and despite her Hippocratic oath, she loved to victimize and pain me as much as was humanly possible. I had an immediate sinking feeling, and nearly wanted to surrender. If I'd been wearing a white shirt, I may have ripped off the hem and done just that.

She came right around the desk and propped one hip against the side. "Why, Wu Fei! Surely you've guessed, being so very certain and full of dozens of perfect tactical strategies for any given situation?"

My mind, having been jumping around like a crazed rabbit attempting to dodge the scatter from the shotgun, thought back to every conversation she'd ever initiated with me. After a moment, I'd rejected the first handful of ideas on why she was here, skipped over the next few, settled on one briefly, and, mind still whirling on how to get out of this current state, I threw her a bone to confuse and prolong.

"You've finally decided to make good on your threat to drag me to a tattoo or piercing parlor to inflict vast quantities of pain without getting around being a physician?" We both knew I wasn't serious…I hoped.

She stood up straight, and laughed, her head thrown back. "No, though the offer still stands, because I really do have a friend who's a true artist in his medium." She grinned again. "And that _may_ loosen you up. Or give you spasms of embarrassment whenever you're forced, due to circumstances, to reveal anything, which you need, too."

Leaning back as far as my rigid chair allowed, and crossing my arms across my chest, I glared. "I give up. What are you here for, woman?"

Totally in her element now, she mimicked my gesture. "Why, to meet your girlfriend, Wu Fei. What else could pull me away from duty?"

Unbelieving, and possibly with my mouth open, I stared, the crazed rabbit in my head now dead, explosive ammo straight to its small frantic heart. I'd say all thought stopped, but it didn't. Panic and the word "Shit" echoed. "My what?"

Looking arch now, I'm sure because of my dumbfounded expression, she flicked her eyebrows up, and repeated it. "Your girlfriend. The rumor mill's going by leaps and bounds over it. My secretary practically had a conniption," here she paused, and changed the subject momentarily, "which I thought she would, because I've been telling you since the first time you were up that the only reason you found her so incompetent was all the fault of your presence—and she couldn't _wait_ to tell me everything about it." Her smile was slightly kinder when she continued, but she was obviously having as much fun out of it all as she could. "I'm not even going to think about repeating everything I've heard since then, and instead, I'm just going to insist _you_ tell me."

Of course she realized I was on guard; it was probably the fact that she _was_ so intelligent that lead me to become friends with her, rather than treating her with the same unsmiling contempt I favored nearly all other offers and attempts at friendship.

With one hand rubbing my eyes again, I put the other up before she could babble on. After I'd made my eyes sore enough for the situation, I frowned at her. "Three dates. I have gone on _three dates_."

She grinned. "That qualifies."

I just shook my head and felt queasy as she settled into one of my office chairs. "So! The only hard info I've had I got from Une, and although I'm _positive_ that'd you'd _die_ to know what she gossips like, I'm not going to reveal, on pain of death. Except for the fact that the girl's name is Sam, and she was in your lecture." There was a bright flash of teeth as she smiled again at me. "And didn't I tell you that it was a necessary for you to do that for poor Margery?"

"Now you're going to go into that classic spiel that it's all your fault, and I should be thanking you for setting it all up?" If I didn't know that the woman was immune to any possible mechanism of disfavor that I could employ, I'd still be trying. As it was, though, I was stuck with her, and that meant hell.

She favored _me_ with a benign look I wouldn't give a poor dog for risk of a bite, and went on. "Oh, of course. But I just think you're finally coming out of that shell you've tried to inflict on us all." She leant forward. "I swear Wu Fei, if that damned machine hadn't _told_ you that your path lay with the others, I don't think you _ever_ would have let them become friends. And I still have to remember that I was there to see it, because even that boggles the mind."

I could feel my lips tightening as they drew in to my teeth. "What do you mean, Sally? I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean that you have to start loosening up. I _mean_, that if you don't, you're going to drive yourself straight insane because you can't rely on that damned machine to tell you who your friends and comrades are going to be. It's gone, and now you have to do it on your own!"

Sally pushed away from the chair and stood up, her arms askew on her hips like I'd seen her do so many times, and glared at me with the amused affection that seemed imbedded in her personality. It never helped my mood or disposition, because I could imagine her showing the same face to the aforementioned awkward pet…which is often how I felt.

"Wu Fei, you're going to have to face up to it sooner or later." She turned to the door, but stopped with one hand the handle, pausing before she opened it up again. "Surely, after all the trials that life and you have put yourself through, this isn't something that can make you back down? After all, Wu Fei…I think it is certainly time for you to move on from the last lesson." And poof, she was gone. Some magic genie.

But Friday afternoon was a good time for me to have a dilemma of thought, because by the afternoon it was easy to make my way into the gym, and take out what I could there. Being the week's end, it was deserted, those who had been frantic in the morning apparently deciding that keeping themselves as neat and presentable as possible was a good idea—I imagined so they wouldn't have to shower on the way out the door for whatever amusements they had planned for the evening. That left me to do solitary exercises, and clear my mind, for which I was very grateful.

* * *

The polished black wood of my table reflected a little of the cold light from the fixture. I could stare at the pool and let my mind follow each of the twisted tangents it sought, because no clarity of mind can actually root through the problem for you.

Vacant, more than anything else, is what I felt. That vacant feeling you get after an overload of thought or emotion. I'd felt much this same way after Treize defeated me, and after I'd killed him. And when Heero confronted me. Or after I'd realized that I'd loved my wife, and hadn't known until she was dead.

Something was waiting now, too. It waited for me to decide what to do, make the various choices that needed to be made with this new-found stillness, before the cacophony of life made its way back to light my kitchen table up in the morning. In the morning.

The morning would have that same tinge of gold promise to it that my thoughts had. That was the thing, I suppose, that had me feeling the echoing of a door slamming on the many things I'd done already.

I couldn't so easily fall into that silliness that is love, again. Not with my eyes open, and my thoughts no longer full of the arrogance and foolishness that had clouded them when I was fourteen, when I was not _in_ love with my wife, but loving her nonetheless.

Would I get some peace from that old one, or from this new possibility of caring routine that I was now facing?

That was the burning question that roiled around in my head, filling it with all emptiness but for that single string of thoughts. Would allowing myself to fall into this still let me find my few peaceful moments, or would it embroil me into the game of jealousy and deceit that so many allowed themselves to find in any type of relationship, any interaction of people?

Could I circumvent that happening by taking care now…a just in case clause for the future. Take anything that could be used against me, and get rid of the possibility, and would I feel more secure in any of the outcomes that this interaction have?

That was it, in the very littlest of terms.

That thought gave me a path, and it was a simple one. Before I was actually there, so far that I couldn't leave it, I would have to show her that nothing she could really do would hurt until I let it. Which was simple, and galvanized me into action.

If, perhaps, I was a little more frenzied about that action than I would have liked, I let it pass, knowing that I would have to find my answers before I could calm myself. I would have to prove to myself that my judgment wasn't skewed now, as it had been in the past.

I felt a small smile brush the edges of my still lips as I pulled my helmet off of the wall next to the garage door opener. This was just another test for me to attempt to break myself against. Had I learned in the time I had known the other pilots? Had they, collectively, managed to teach me anything? Had Treize, with his high words and scathing actions taught me? Had Mariemaia, and, again, the other pilots? Had Sally, with her relentless prodding and pushing and teasing and jokes?

The farther along the road I went, the more turns I took, leaning on my bike, the more I thought about all the different lessons I had taught myself, and had been taught by others, I could feel myself become slightly more frantic for the answers to my questions. And again, I felt the urgent need to see what my judgment had chosen, with this girl, and this circumstance.

When I reached her house the entire neighborhood was dark, and peaceful, and quiet.

I'd been to her front door before, with its grated fake window, and the large lock that I'm sure Duo would have laughed at. But my mind was halfway numb as I reached out to pull her to the door with the strike of my hand on the wood.


	4. Chapter 4

: grins : okay, so, that took awhile!  
Many thanks to crazy and miyabi, 'cause they rock, and all sorts of other stuff, too!  
so many thanks to crazy and miyabi, 'cause they rock, and a whole buncha other stuff, and...yeah...they just rock

No warnings, other than some sap  
and you know, I just can't figure out why everyone seems to think we own these guys..I mean...we /don't/...and we don't even wanna make money off a 'em...

Credibility Ch. IV

——————————————————————————

love, n. 1: strong affection  
2: warm attachment of the sea  
3: attraction based on sexual desire  
4: a beloved person  
5: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for others  
6: a score of zero in tennis

As I knocked again, I cursed myself for doing this. But I just had to tell her, and, when I'd been sitting there at the kitchen table an hour ago, as I'd realized that I really did _want_ to, of all things, learn to care for her, or even, hell, _fall_ in love with her…I'd also realized that I had to tell her everything, starting with Nataku.

I had my hand raised to knock again when her sleepy voice came from the intercom grill. "Who is it? And this had better be a good one this time if that's you, Whitney."

Whitney—that was her younger sister. "No. It's me." Well, that was informative. But she didn't need anything else.

"Wu Fei?" The locks on the door began to click as she went through them. It only took a few seconds before the door was opened a little to show her sleepily confused blue eyes surrounded by really messy hair. "What are you doing here, Wu Fei?" The use of my name made me think back to the first and last time she'd called me 'Fei. That's all it had taken, one single, simple explanation of my thoughts and feelings on the shortening of my name, and she had listened.

I looked at her, as she stood hesitantly at the door at three-o'clock on a Saturday morning, her loose pajama pants and the dark blue tank-top wrinkled from sleep. "Can I come in?"

She frowned a little, small creases appearing between her eyebrows, and nodded, backing up to give me room to enter. "Sure." Still frowning, I think in bafflement, she locked the door again, and led the way through a mostly darkened house. We came into a kitchen, where she flicked the light switch and went to the table, motioning a chair for me. I ran a quick eye around, since I'd never been in her house.

The kitchen looked like a farm, all green and gold and blue, like the sky, with white and black as accents. The table was solid wood, the appliances all covered with paneling, like the cabinets.

I sat down, putting my helmet down on the floor by my chair, but when she just waited for me to speak, no words would come out. We sat, quiet for several minutes, before she gave a hard sigh and stood back up. "You know, Wu Fei, you really know how to time it, don't you?" She came around to stand by my chair. "It's three o'clock in the morning, and I was really looking forward to sleeping in." There wasn't really any condemnation in her voice, more an amusement for something I didn't understand. "Come on, Wu Fei, we're going back to bed." She tugged at my arm where it rested, slack on the table. Not really comprehending, still focused so intently on my purpose, and my inability to communicate it to her, I stood up and followed her as she kept pulling on me, leading me down a hall, up stairs to the second storey, and into a room, its door open, on the left. The lights were on, shedding a golden glow over a bedroom.

She let go of my arm, turning around to me. "Hold on a minute, I'll get something for you." She was already out the door when words came floating back to me. "Oh, and I need to turn off the lights downstairs." I could hear her steps on the stairs. I looked around the room, my eyes running over the messy bed to the dresser. I also noted the window, large, but no tree in front of it, that was good. There was stuff on the top of the dresser, so I went to get a better look. Mostly they were framed photographs. I think that they were all family, there was a strong resemblance between the majority of people, and the ones who didn't show it were usually in wedding pictures. I didn't touch anything, and set off for the bookcase. The books were a scattering of subjects, from the latest suspense to gardening to heavy tomes of history. I'd barely glanced through them before she came back with clothes in her arms.

"Okay, I think these'll fit close enough, they're Leon's, he's about your size. Sort of." She brought them to me, pushing them into my hands. "The bathroom's through there," she nodded to a door in the far right wall, "go ahead and change."

I went, and did, and verified that the clothes were okay, so long as I didn't have to go out in public. Apparently her brother Leon was tall and rather thin, because the waist of the soft flannel pants fit okay, they were just about three inches too long, trailing down over my socked feet. The t-shirt was fine. I folded my jeans and the sweater neatly and put them on one of the shelves that were behind the door.

When I opened the door she wasn't in the room, but I'd only been standing there a second or two when I heard her footsteps out in the hall. She came through the doorway with a cat in her arms, and looked at me with a frown. "He was behind the banana tree. You scared him with all that pounding." The cat, which was white and blue, just yawned as it rolled around in her arms. She put him down on the ground and he darted for under the bed as she closed the door to the hallway. She gave a sigh, more motion than any sound, and started for the bed as I stood there, just outside the bathroom. She was rearranging the blankets, straightening the different layers and getting rid of the twists when she looked up at me.

"Come on, Wu Fei. Bed. Sleep. We'll talk in the morning." She waved a hand at me, making motions at the bed, and I, uncertainly, began to move forward.

I'd shared beds with the others during the war, but I knew this was different. But maybe she was right. Maybe if I could sleep—I didn't think I would, but—it would be easier to say in the morning. No, maybe she'd listen better if she got more sleep, and the sun was shining. Duo told me once that everything seems better in the light of day, that secrets are heavier in the dark. He'd been sad when he'd said it, and I hadn't really understood exactly what he meant at the time, but I think I did as I stood by that bed. Maybe it would be easier in the morning.

So I climbed into the bed across from Samantha, and pulled the heavy covers around, and rearranged pillows…I did all of it, until I couldn't really justify it anymore.

But I didn't sleep, not as she turned the light off, or even after. I had my hands clasped over the covers on my chest, feeling the rise and fall of my breathing, and stared, unseeing, straight ahead. When my eyes adjusted, and I was able to see fairly well, I stared at the ceiling. And I thought. I thought about the different things I'd done in my just-shy-of-twenty years; I thought of all the different choices I'd made up until now. And I thought of Meilan, as I seemed to be doing so much lately.

I think she would have liked Sam. They were both determined about their places in the world, but I think they were different enough about it to actually get along. Then again, I think that Sam was sort of like Duo. Nearly everyone liked Duo, he seemed to radiate charisma the way Heero radiated danger. Sam, once she let you close enough to know her, was like that. There was something that drew you in, and it wasn't just me. Look at how Duo was to her.

The thought of Duo led me off into the secrets he kept piled up in that head of his. He was…what was the term? A pack-rat, holding onto all the various strings, keeping a wealth of information on the tips of his fingers, like he were worried that—Sam interrupted my thoughts, her voice clear but muffled.

"Wu Fei, if you don't stop thinking so hard, your brains are going to go to mush and leak out your ears." There was a pause as she let that sink in. "Go. To. Sleep." Her voice pulled my attention firmly to her, sharing this bed and I rolled over to look at her. It made me smile.

She was on her stomach, and her head was under the set of pillows. The end of her pony-tail stuck out from the bottom of the stack, and I had to hold back the hand that wanted to touch it where it lay against the smooth skin revealed by the fairly low back of her shirt. I felt a smile curve my lips as I watched the breath go in and out, slow and steady. I could see the exact moment when she slipped under sleep's thrall as her breathing changed and the slight tension that seems to follow everyone through their days gave way to the lassitude of sleep. I think that I was still smiling, still watching her, and that it was the calming thoughts that flitted, half-formed, around my head, that sent me into my own sleep.

I woke up in much the same place, but even before I opened my eyes I knew she was closer than she'd been. And she was also already awake, her breathing wasn't even enough, and I could feel a hand ghosting across my face. I waited a minute as it withdrew before I "woke up" and opened my eyes to see hers, staring back at me from about a foot away. This close, I could see the various shades of blue that wrapped around her iris. She smiled, and her eyes scrunched just a little.

"Good morning." Her eyes widened, the smile dropped, and her hand shot up to cover her mouth. "Sorry."

I could feel my confusion spread across my face. "For what?" She giggled, and her eyes crinkled a little more, so I knew that behind her hand she was smiling again. She shook her head though, and scrambled backwards over the bed, coming to her feet on the other side, and picking up a pair of glasses off the nightstand. I hadn't known she wore glasses. She shot me a smile, and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

While I could hear her moving around, I ran my hand over the sheets where she'd slept, feeling the warmth, and realized that there was a slight fragrance over everything around me. It reminded me of Duo, so I thought that it might be her shampoo or conditioner, something like that. I liked it, whatever it was. The cat had moved from under the bed to the top of the pillows she'd fallen asleep under, and as I looked at him, he opened an eye to send me a glaring cat look, and yawned, settling more deeply into the soft pillows with a stretch.

I heard the water running, and turned from my cat watching to see the door to the bathroom. It wasn't very long before it opened to show Sam, still the same, smiling as she looked up to see me looking at her.

"Go ahead and use whatever you need to. I found another toothbrush, it's sitting on the counter." She came closer. "I'm going to go make coffee." As she got to the door, her hand on the knob, her face was partially visible where she was looking over her shoulder. "Unless you'd rather have something else?"

I could feel my loosened hair pulling out of the tie as I shook my head. "Coffee's fine." She gave a nod and opened the door, leaving it like that as she went down the stairs. After she was gone, I stayed a moment where I was, then pushed the covers down and went to use the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, and, after reminding myself that she'd said use whatever I needed, used the hairbrush on the counter to pull my hair back into its usual ponytail. I wondered if I should get dressed in my own clothes again, but she hadn't gotten out of her sleep-wear, and she might be more comfortable if we were on more even footing. Quatre had pointed that out to me once when he'd dressed casually to meet with some of his construction crews. So I stayed in my borrowed pajamas and came out of the bathroom.

The bedroom was cheery in the sunlight shining in the windows, casting a warm spot over the furniture. The cat was still on the pillows. I went to the door to the hallway, and could smell coffee below me. I hadn't had coffee ever before the war, but quickly found it addictive when it had been introduced to me. I followed the smell and the dark map I'd made last night, ending up back in the now light-filled kitchen. Standing in the doorway, I knew she didn't know I was there as she went around, putting various things down on the table, like milk, and sugar, and spoons and cups. When she did see me, she jumped, just a little.

"You could have said something." I came in and stood by the table while she waited by the coffee pot, two cups in front of her. She'd expected me to sit down, because after a minute of silence, she looked over at me with a slightly exasperated expression on her face. "Sit down already!" So I pulled out a chair and sat, followed moments later by Sam, who set one of the cups down in front of me while she pulled the sugar to her and put just a little in, followed by just a little milk.

I watched her slender hands, and then her face as she brought the finished coffee to it and took a deep breath, her eyes closed, the gold, wire-rimmed glasses giving her a younger appearance. She opened them and her smile widened as she lowered the cup and looked at me, the sun glinting off the lenses in her glasses. "I love the smell of fresh coffee."

I nodded and took a sip of the hot coffee in my cup. "I didn't know you wore glasses." Well, that was brilliant. But she just gave a little self-conscious laugh and pulled them off, turning them to face her before she slid them back on.

"Yeah, I'm actually blind as a bat. I wear contacts most of the time."

"Oh." Another careful sip of coffee. "Well, you've seen my reading glasses."

"You too?" Her face was creased in a frown. "I didn't know that."

"That just goes to show how much attention you were paying in the lectures, I wore them on the first day, though I don't think I wore them after that."

"Hey, you can't hold that against me!" She pouted a little into her cup. "Besides, that doesn't change the fact that I didn't know."

I let out a sigh as the memory of what else she didn't know surfaced, and I put my cup down. Trying to work up the nerve, I looked up at her, watching her face as she drew a finger through the coffee ring from her cup on the table. The sunlight gilded her, making her skin golden as her hair, which was shining like a golden flame. I don't know it if helped, really. I can't remember ever being that nervous as I tried to find words.

But she looked up and met my gaze, and I knew, like I'd known the night before, that I had to tell her, now, so that she really knew me, all of me, not just what I let the world see, because by facing the hidden fears I had of exposure and censure, it would help me, both here, and when I would need it more, later. So…

"I have to tell you something." She nodded, not breaking eye contact, and if she wouldn't, I could do no less. But I did clear my suddenly closed throat. "I," a pause as she looked down at the table, freeing me from her serious eyes. I began again, and knew then how to approach it. "I know that many people wondered why I was given such a high position in Preventers." She nodded a yes, eyes still on the puddle of coffee. "Well, it's because of the war, and the—" a pause again, this time as I faced the shame that always rose when I thought of my position in the next part. "And the Mariemaia Incident." Another nod, this time with a flash of blue as she glanced up at me where I sat across from her.

"What about it?" Her voice was low.

Still watching her, I took a deep breath before I continued. "I piloted Nataku." Now she did look up, but it wasn't really in surprise, more as if she wanted to see my face, because she ran her eyes over me, a careful examination. But it wasn't in surprise.

"You knew." She shook her head, eyes dropping once more.

"No. But I did guess." Well, that sort of simplified matters. But there was more than that.

"How long ago did you 'guess'?" I suppose I was almost proud that she had figured it out

A wry smile went across her face before she drank some coffee, hiding it. "I think I started to wonder after that second class." Her smile broadened as she looked up at me. "There were several things that struck me, that's all."

I frowned, thinking back. It'd been years since I'd really thought about "hiding" it all, it'd become second nature, automated, like driving, or getting ready for bed at night. "Like what?"

She got up with her cup, refilling it, then sat back down to fix it. I wondered what her coffee tasted like. I'd always had mine black, never tried it any other way.

"Well, why'd they have you give those lectures? I mean, you obviously knew the systems but why did you?" I could see the logic in that. Why would a "pencil pusher" in Preventers know "dead" systems that well? "But really, you could have studied them, so that wasn't enough. But when I pulled up the diagrams I saw the signatures." And I remembered signing them. She looked at me through the hair that was always around her face, from the way it was cut. "They're all signed in the same format: a number, then four letters." They were indeed. "Nataku's were all signed 05NACW." Again, true. "And there were the two versions, one labeled as 'Nataku', one 'Altron', so that's the first two letters, right?"

I nodded, though there was more to it than that in those names.

"Which just left CW—Chang Wufei." She paused, then went on. "It's the same for DeathScythe—02DSDM, DeathScythe, Duo Maxwell." I cleared my throat.

"The final thing was how you and Duo talked about those motorcycles. You knew everything about the engine and the different parts, and how to do it, but you didn't talk about it like Nicky and his friends do." When I raised eyebrows at her, she explained. "They're always going on about the brands, and they always use another bike as a reference. Neither of you did. It was like you didn't need it, you weren't going to base it on anything but what you wanted it to be. Though Duo was the one I thought must design the most."

It made me smile, just everything about it. Yes, Duo was like that. He just seemed to instinctively know which parts would be best, create the best overall effect. "He's always been like that, for as long as I've known him."

We let the silence sit while we each sipped our coffee, and the sun warmed the house around us. Eventually, though, I knew I had to tell her the rest.

I finished off my cup, and set it down decisively, making her look up at me again.

"There's more I have to tell you."

She put her own, nearly empty, cup down, and I saw the words on it finally, "Coffee is my friend. I like my friend very, very much." It was…cute. And it suited her. She hadn't given me a mug with anything on it.

"Okay. What else is there?" She was still not very upset looking, as if it didn't matter, whatever it was. I cringed inside. It was time to tell her about Meilan.

"Uh. Well, before the war, I wasn't going to be the pilot for Nataku—I mean, it was Shenlong, then. I was just going to be a scholar." I let my eyes see my home as it had been. It was gone, now. I continued with a sigh. "My clan had made an agreement, and it had been decided, after I was born, that they would seal it by marriage. So they arranged my marriage to a girl I didn't know yet, and we were married when I turned fourteen." Well, it got a reaction. She was staring at me, her eyes wide and her body still. "Meilan was the one chosen to pilot Shenlong." I sighed again. "We didn't get along very well. We were both stubborn, and both of us thought that we knew everything." I could feel the sadness on my face, but I had to finish it all. "Before Shenlong was finished, the Alliance tried to force a search of our colony. Meilan decided to fight in the battle in a prototype suit we had, but I refused to fight."

I looked up at Sam's face. "She was defeated, and she—" I took a deep breath, filling my lungs. "She died in my arms. That's when I chose to fight. I renamed the Gundam 'Nataku' in honor of her, and when it was finished, I went to Earth, to prove to Meilan…I don't even know, really, anymore." There, that was it. I think she knew it was, too.

She nodded at me, sitting back in her chair, and sighed her own sigh, eyes focused once more on the puddle on the table. "Okay, I wasn't expecting that." She looked back at me. "Thank you for telling me, though. Everything." She smiled at me as she said it, but quickly turned her attention down to the middle space between us, possibly studying the wood grain as she let her mind process what I'd told her. We sat there in silence for a long time, both of us just thinking. When she did look back up at me, I couldn't decipher her emotions, not with the odd look on her face. "An arranged marriage, huh?" She shook her head, clearing the air. "You know what? I don't know if it matters." I looked at her with a question, and seeing it, she went on. "Well, it does matter, because it's part of you, but I don't know if it makes any real difference in how…" She trailed off, looking a little uncertain, and blushing very faintly. I wondered what she'd almost said.

Another shake, sending the blonde hair around her face in an arc. "That's enough serious stuff. It's Saturday, it's sunny out. We need something to do today." She sent me a brilliant smile, and I was only too happy to agree. It felt right to have told her, and I was glad, now that I had. There was more, but those two things were the major parts, everything else was contingent upon them.

Thinking about what she'd said, I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to do, just so long as I was doing it with her. "I don't have any ideas."

She tilted her head in the way she had when she was thinking. "Well, I was going to garden today, but I don't really feel like it, so that's out. Hmmm…it's a problem, it is." She stood up, taking the coffee cups to the empty sink and rinsing them out. When she finished, she spun around to face the room. "I know—it's perfect." She came back to me, pulling on my arm, silently asking me to come with her. I did, but she was just taking me back up the stairs to her bedroom, where I noticed that the cat still was.

When she let go of me to dig around in a dresser drawer, I sat down next to the pile of pillows it was sitting on, and reached out to attempt a pet. You have to be careful with cats. Sometimes they really, really dislike attention. But he seemed fine with it, leaning into my caress, and purring a little. "What's his name?" His tag didn't have it engraved on it, only Sam's and a phone number.

She looked up from her explorations of the dresser. "Oh, that's Aristotle. But I call him Tottles." Yes, I'd imagine he'd have to be pretty laid back as far as cats go to put up with that name.

"Hello, Tottles." He pushed his head against my hand as I scratched him under the chin. I glanced over at Sam, who found whatever she was looking for right then, pulled it out, pushed the drawer in and stood up on the tail end of an "Ahah." She turned around and came back to the bed, seating herself next to me.

"Okay, I've got two mountain bikes in the shed. I know this place, it's about three miles off the road, but it's beautiful. Would you like to take a picnic?"

I was still petting Tottles as I thought about it. The bikes reminded me of that time at Quatre's, when we'd all learned, and I could feel the smile spread across my face. She was looking at me, a soft look went over her own.

"What are you thinking about?" Her voice was soft too, her hands still in her lap.

I focused in on her. "During the war, we were all in between missions, and Quatre thought it would be good for us if we all learned how to ride a bicycle." The smile widened, until it felt like it was splitting my whole expression. "It wasn't quite as easy as any of us thought. Trowa, who already knew how, told us this old idiom he'd heard, about how it's easy to ride a bike. We all learned eventually, but I think we were more scraped up and bruised from that than a lot of the missions we had." Her smile was soft, but a little sad.

"Were you hurt a lot?" Her hand wasn't very far from mine where it was on the bed. The hand on Tottles stilled as I thought about that question.

"No. I was never injured very badly." It made me think about Heero, and the others. "I was lucky." The smile was gone from my face.

"Good. I'm glad you were." She was very matter-of-fact about it, and I met the blue of her eyes. "So, do you want to do the bicycling?"

It didn't really require much thought. It was spending time with her, so therefore was fine with me. "Okay."

"Okay." She got back up, shaking out a pair of jeans. "Do you have something appropriate to wear? Like a really old pair of jeans?" When I just looked at her in confusion, she laughed, and showed me the bottom of the jeans. On the right leg there were old vertical rips, all of them sort of hap-hazardly sown up. "The bikes are old, and they don't have gear-guards, so you end up with shredded pants, unless you tuck or tie them up, but that's always been annoying to me, so I just keep a pair of bike pants." She shrugged, one shoulder moving up and down. "So do you have anything that'll work?"

I had to think for a moment, but eventually my mind hit on my "work-on-motorcycle" jeans. They were just about dead, half-way black and torn in places from catching on different things. Those would work. I nodded, "Yes, but I'll need to stop at my house." She shrugged, this time both shoulders.

"That's okay." She went back to the dresser, pulling out other clothes; I looked away when her hand came out with undergarments. After she had everything she needed, she went towards the bathroom. "I'm going to take a quick shower, okay? It won't take very long." No response seemed very necessary, but as she closed the door and the water turned on a few seconds later, I didn't know what to do, so I stayed on the second floor, and took some short looks at the other rooms.

Apparently, all of her siblings had their own room, each one different, and obviously rooms that were more personal than just guest bedrooms. I speculated on whether this was the family home, that had been her parents before they died.

Ten minutes later the water shut off, and I went back to her bedroom, sitting on the bed, trying to act as if I hadn't been gone. Yeah, as if I hadn't had enough practice in the past to pull off whatever I needed to, not that I'd ever really cared.

"Ah, that always makes me feel more human." She smiled at me, her eyes shining, and I tried to look intelligent as I kept up on the exercises in normalcy. She didn't notice—or if she did, she didn't show any sign of it—and nodded in the direction of the bathroom. "It's all yours. While you're getting dressed, I'll go pack up a picnic." She padded in socks out the door, towel still in hand. I went to the still steamy bathroom, smelling the fragrance I'd noticed from the bed in the air. Closing the door, I went to the tub to check one of the bottles, to see if it was her shampoo or conditioner. Both of them said they were the same scent, so it was one of them. I closed it back up, put it where it'd been, and reached for my clothes from the previous night. It was a bare minute while I got dressed, and I didn't need to do anything else, so I folded up my borrowed clothes, placed them on the toilet, and went down to the kitchen.

She had a peculiar thing that looked sort of like a lunch box or a small cooler open on the table, and was putting things from the fridge and from various cabinets into it. She looked up at me, and I noticed that she was wearing her contacts again, when I entered to stand, arms folded, against the edge of the counter.

"Looks like we've got chicken salad for sandwiches, and potato salad, and fresh fruit."

"Okay." The towel she'd used on her hair was hanging over the back of a chair. I noticed it when she put the last thing—an ice pack—into the cooler box, and closed it up.

"The bikes are out in the shed, we need to put them into the truck, then we can leave." She went for a door I'd seen last night that led to a small, screened-in porch, then out into the back yard. It seemed to be more garden than yard. There was a large shed set against the back line of privacy fence, and she headed for that. I followed, watching as she swung our lunch in her hand as she walked. On some level I noticed how her jeans fit, but it almost felt forced, as if, because I'd worked so hard to ignore as many of the people around me as possible, I'd forgotten what it was like to be twenty. Unsurprising, that in the end, I'd have messed up my sexuality to the point where I'd have to concentrate to do more than see the potential in someone for harm, have to consciously look for what made a person attractive.

I gave a sigh, and chose to act like I didn't see her shoot a look at me over her shoulder. She used a key from her pocket to unlock the shed door, pushing it open until it stuck against the floor, two-thirds the way in.

"The bikes are over there." She hit the lights, and used her head to point to the far wall. "They're behind that screen-thing." She followed me over to that area, pulling the light screen, which was weathered, obviously having been outside for many summers, out of the way, to reveal two bikes, in good condition, and obviously cared for, but, like she'd said, rather old, and showing it with scraped paint and worn handles. We rolled them out, backing up carefully in the crowded shed, until they were outside. I held on to them both, keeping them up-right, while she re-locked the door. The cooler she slid onto a metal setup on the back of one of the bikes, where it sat securely. She took that one from me. "Alright, let's take these around the house. The truck's in the garage." I was just going to guide the bike, but Sam put her left foot on the right pedal, and pushed off the ground, directing the bike she was half-way on. Not to be left behind, I tried to do it, and found it effective enough. I'd have to show it to Duo the next time we used bikes—which wasn't very often.

We both made it successfully to the gate, pausing as she unlocked the gate, passed through, and then pausing again as she stopped to relock it. Then we went around the house, and came to a stop in front of the garage doors. There was a code pad to the left, and she went there, typing in the code quickly, though I still caught it, and waited for the smaller of the two doors to open. As it went up, it progressively revealed a battered old red truck, the paint peeling with dents scattered across any flat surface. She didn't wait for me, but lifted the bike up and over the side of the bed, and it wasn't done too gracefully, showing that she felt the weight. I did the same, shooting a look at her.

"If you'd waited a second, I could have done that." I could hear the petulant tone without anyone pointing it out to me.

She winked at me. "But what would I do if you weren't there?" I could certainly think of a few responses to that, but now it wasn't in my better interests to use those tactics around her, so I kept my mouth shut.

She climbed into the driver's seat, and I, by unspoken agreement, went down the drive to my bike, parked by the curb. She pulled out into the street, the truck backing up carefully while I typed in the start-up code, and waited while I put my helmet on. Through necessity, I was forced to go in front of her to lead the way, but I had to be careful to keep her behind me, which made me go slower than I would have otherwise.

Twenty minutes later we came to a stop in front of my little house, this time me slowly taking the motorcycle up to the garage door while she parked by the curb. The door opened when I got close enough for the automatic opener to operate, and I parked the bike next to the others. She walked up the driveway to where I was settling the bike.

"That's some hobby you've got." I watched as she walked around the seven bikes I'd managed to crowd into the large garage, running her hands over one occasionally. When she'd circled the last one, she looked up at me, smiling. "They're nice."

I raised eyebrows in false indignation. "Nice?" I carefully set the helmet I'd been holding down on the work bench I'd built into one side of the garage. "Do you have any idea how much time I've spent on these?"

She laughed, seeing through my act. Which alone told me how observant she was—I may not have been Duo or Trowa's equal, but I could act pretty damn convincingly when I wanted to. "Okay, so they're a little more than just nice."

I smiled back at her, just a little one. "Thank you." I headed for the door to the house, hitting the garage door opener on the way through, and she followed me. I couldn't help wondering whether or not she was watching how my pants fit as she followed me. And that brought the meditation exercises back into use.

The door let out into the kitchen, and as I went on, towards the bedroom to shower and change, I told her to make herself at home. I didn't hear what she might have said before the bedroom door closed and I quickly did what I needed to, grabbing the right clothes and heading for the shower.

She wasn't in the kitchen, but the living room, when I came back out, jeans on and t-shirt neatly tucked in, my still wet hair pulled back and ignored as it slowly dripped down my back. She stood looking at the line of abstract photographs that hung on the wall. I liked those photos. They'd been a gift from Quatre the Christmas before last, and it surprised me how much I did like them. There were six of them, and each one was in a different style. One was black and white, one was just shades of white. The other four had color, but never the same. Somehow the chaotic mixture of the six of them appealed to me, as if they were representative of something in me that I couldn't put to words. I came up behind her as she closely examined them. She would stand back, and look at them all together, then go forward to look at just one, then back up again.

She didn't hear me as I came up, so I watched her, and stood just where she'd end up the next time when pulled back to look at them. She gave a little screech when she hit my chest, jumping forward only to swing around to glare at me, blue eyes glinting.

I had to laugh a little as she glared. "I think you were concentrating too hard." I nodded toward the photos. "Do you like them?"

She turned back to the pictures, her head turning appraisingly as she planted her hands on her hips. "You know, I think I do. But I can't for the life of me figure out what it is that I like about them." I took the step that would bring me even with her.

I looked them over again as I thought of how to answer. "I've had them now for almost two years, and I haven't been able to do that either." I shook my head. "I don't even know what possessed Quatre to give them to me." She rotated around to face me as I stared at the wall.

"Well, did you ask him?"

"Yes."

She was a little coyer, rising to the bait of my slight teasing. "And what did he say?"

"He said," here I paused, because I hadn't told her about him yet, "that the soul of space told him they were for me."

Her brows drew together and her lips pursed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that he looked at them and felt that he should get them for me." The frown only got deeper.

"That's just about as vague as it's possible to get." A further nod from me.

We looked at the wall for another minute, before she turned to face me again. "Who is Quatre, anyway? I've heard you and Duo use the name before," she drew in breath, "and I know that he's got to be pretty well off, because the name on those photos is an expensive one, not to mention that bike wasn't cheap."

I raised my eyebrows. "I'd have thought you'd have recognized him just from that description."

She shook her head. "No, the only name that matches is just too ridiculous to consider." I looked at her questioningly.

"Why? What about this person makes it so?" I knew who she was considering, and even if she hadn't realized it, she would have to get over any ridiculousness of it before she met him—and she would, as he would be down here as soon as I picked up the phone to him, and he felt the echo of what I did. He'd be arranging the trip on a computer before he was off the phone.

"Well, the only Quatre I can think of ever having heard of, is Quatre Winner, and he's very nearly the richest man alive now, because of what he's done, taking the reins of WEI after his father. So, it must be someone else." She gave a little laugh, and waited for me to give her who it really was.

I felt a smirk cross my face as she stared at me. The smile on her face slowly left as she saw my expression. "You cannot be serious." I stayed silent. "The Quatre who gave you these pictures is Quatre Winner." It was just a confirmation statement, not a question. I nodded. "I need a chair." I took her arm and guided her over to the sofa. She dropped into it, her head further dropping into her hands. As her shoulders started to shake, I thought for a second that she was crying, but I could hear the sound of muffled laughter waft up to me. When her head left her hands, her face was red, her eyes streaming tears of near-hysterical laughter.

"You're really good friends with Quatre R. Winner, the head of WEI." As she looked up at me, all signs of laughter fled her face and the redness became white. "QRW." Her eyes were wide as they stared past me. "Shit." It was the first time I'd heard her swear. Her eyes were still wide when they focused in on my face. "He was a pilot too." I nodded again.

"Yes, he was a pilot." I thought about telling her about Quatre's past a little bit, but decided not to. "Sandrock." She nodded absentmindedly as she thought.

"Yes, Sandrock. The one that had apparently been designed to withstand nearly any abrasive surface according to the schematics—including sand, if it were stirred up into a sand storm. Because he's Arabic, middle-eastern. He'd have support there, because they were resistant throughout the entire war." She squeezed her eyes shut hard, then opened them to look me in the eye. "Any other world celebrities I should know about?"

I had to shake my head. Of course I knew Relena, she was my boss' boss. And none of the other pilots were famous, so it was safe to say no.

"Good. One's enough." She held up a hand to me, and when I took it, used me as leverage to stand up. "Come on, or we'll lose all the daylight."

We went out the front door, with me pulling it closed behind us, locked. I reset the alarm system, which I hadn't had to touch on the way in, and we walked side by side down the front walk to the truck. She surprised me by handing me the keys to the truck before climbing into the passenger side where it met up with the curb. I felt the urge to just look at them stupidly for a moment, but nothing from my past would let me. No, I just grabbed them, and walked around the front end, hiding my surprise, as if there were still soldiers surrounding me, both my own and my enemies', to catch me in any moment I showed weakness. Old defenses, still faithfully standing, although, supposedly, in this new peace, I had no need for them.

The door was unlocked, as the passenger's had been, so I just climbed in, settled myself into the seat, using that bare moment of time to adjust my thoughts to the slight differences noticeable, and, with a shove of the keys, and the flip of a wrist, both feet on the pedals, the car was started, even as I buckled and pulled the emergency brake. Such was the life of a pilot. Sometimes, the only time you had to secure yourself was the time it took to get things going. Wasn't it Duo who said that?

No, not Duo. It was Heero. One of those moments he'd get when his humor would crop up, surprising everyone.


End file.
